Author Archives: Josh Lucas Mitte

Offering hope to young people- why I’m backing Josh for President.

By Josh Lucas Mitte | Wed 22nd October 2025 - 11:55 am

Editor’s Note: In November party members will be voting to elect our next Party President. At Lib Dem Voice we welcome posts from each of the candidates – one to launch their candidature plus a maximum of one per week during the actual campaign.

Reflecting in the days and weeks after another amazing Party conference, I’ve been struck by the number of discussions I had, whether at fringe events or (more often!) in the bar, about how we engage and inspire the next generation of Lib Dem members and voters.

As Chair of English Young Liberals, this is something I am passionate about. Whatsmore, with the next General Election set to be the first where 16 year olds can vote, we need to be thinking more than ever about how we talk to young people and give them a reason to vote Liberal Democrat.

That’s why I am so glad that Josh Barbarinde is standing to be our President.

Josh has real, on the ground, experience working with and energising young people to do great things. His background as a Youth Worker and setting up ‘Cracked It’, a social enterprise supporting young people out of crime and gangs and into employment through phone repair, shows he knows the value of engaging teenagers where they are and on the things that interest them – not just lecturing them as far too many politicians do.

The world can look like a pretty bleak place for young people right now. The nasty, divisive politics we see from Trump in the US and Farage here at home reflects a small, closed-off world that doesn’t give a lot of optimism for those of us worried about our future. Meanwhile issues like climate change, the doom laden reports about the impact on the economy from AI or the ridiculous thought that anyone my age might ever like to own a home are big drivers of the fact that 85% of young people believe that it will be harder for them to succeed than their parents. Yet we see no serious answers, or often even recognition, to these challenges from any of the other Parties.

Moving beyond tactical votes: Taking the fight to Labour – everywhere.

By Josh Lucas Mitte | Mon 10th February 2025 - 12:55 pm

The following article is primarily concerned with how we approach Labour voters nationally and locally (outside Labour-facing seats). I have much respect for the many local parties, whether in Liverpool or Southwark, who have taken a strong fight to Labour and for whom much of the criticism here would not apply.

The 2019 and 2024 General Elections made one thing clear – parties cannot control tactical voting, only voters can, and their decision is circumstantial. The reason it worked in 2024 without alliances but failed in 2019 with pacts is because voters were ready to do it in the former and not the latter, our leaflets simply reminded them we were the best option in certain areas.

Almost all the leaflets targeted at Labour voters in target seats simply had previous results as a reason to vote for us, rarely providing any reasons to differentiate us from Labour. This was to avoid ‘offending’ Labour voters who could tactically vote for us, which was understandable, the persistence of this mindset, however, is not. Our dependence on a pure tactical voting message has left us with a chunk of unsustainable voters (YouGov Oct ’24), we saw how detrimental a reliance on borrowed votes can be with the collapse of the Conservative vote in the Red Wall.

As the Conservatives continue to struggle with their national revival, often placing third in the polls, and Labour continues with unpopular decisions in government, the notion of tactical voting weakens more and more. A recent poll puts us within 11 percentage points of four other parties. This becomes a greater issue amongst younger generations who are so disillusioned with the establishment (a recent poll showed they’d prefer a dictatorship) that they are more likely to vote on values, not statistical probabilities – especially when those statistics show “this is how things have been in the past.”

But it is not too late, we can still fully switch these voters to create a more sustainable base, but only if we have the courage to take the fight to Labour.

We must shake off the fear of offending Labour voters for three reasons.

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged labour facing campaigning, party strategy and tactical votes | 8 Comments