Author Archives: Janey Little

Young people are the life and the soul of the Liberal Democrats.

Having long forgiven the party over tuition fees, young people played a pivotal role in the party’s successes in the General Election. We in the Young Liberals have built a reputation over time for being committed campaigners and enthusiastic door-knockers, but even we were amazed at quite how much young people across the party poured their hearts and souls into this election. We have come leaps and bounds from where we were in 2019. Since then, the Young Liberals have professionalised, built capacity and communities across states and regions, and worked together more effectively to ensure that we could maximise our impact in the General Election.  As members, volunteers, party staff, candidates, federal committee members, state executive members, and across all levels of the party, Young Liberals led the way during the General Election.

We had the pleasure of being at the forefront of the campaign. The YL Development Officer fed back to HQ where the Young Liberals were campaigning at different points in the election, helping to inform decisions about where best to organise action days and divert resources throughout the rest of the party. Young people’s commitment to the party strategy and campaigning efforts helped to lock down seats earlier in the campaign, meaning that resources could then be diverted elsewhere, ultimately helping the party to achieve the phenomenal result of 72 MPs.

Each one of us contributes to what we can achieve and what we can become as a party, and we should be nothing but proud as young people in the party for what we collectively accomplished in the General Election.

But more than our efforts on the ground, Young Liberals helped to shape the narrative and the policy offer of the Liberal Democrats in this election. Firstly, it was the Young Liberals who championed carers a few years ago, before it became a key piece of the party’s identity under Ed Davey’s leadership.

Moreover, at autumn conference, Young Liberals worked with the Lambeth local party to pass a policy on ending period poverty. The result is that we were the only major political party to even mention periods in our manifesto. We as a party are leading the way on this issue.