Author Archives: Thomas Worth

Stagnating here – West Sussex at the 2026 local elections

By Thomas Worth | Fri 15th May 2026 - 4:28 pm

Since the results of the 2026 Local Elections, there has rightly been some deep analysis of where we are as a party. Colleagues have argued that we are abandoning the North of England, only focusing on leafy rural areas and are ignoring our cities. While I wholly agree with this criticism, I think it misses an even more crucial point. Even in areas which are becoming our ‘new heartlands’, we are stagnating or even slipping back.

This brings us to West Sussex. As a local member, I do have more to celebrate than some around the country. For the first time since 1997, the Conservatives have lost control of the council, with us being the leading party, albeit tied with Reform. It also looks like we will be able to come to an agreement with other parties and lead the council. However, this top-down analysis misses a tale of two halves.

While in our held constituencies, Chichester, Horsham and Mid Sussex, the party made excellent gains, outside of these constituencies, a different story unfolded. Take Arun District as an example. Of the ten divisions we held before the elections, two of them came from this part of Sussex, namely Bognor Regis East and Littlehampton East. After the 2026 Election, of our 23 seats, none are in Arun District.

Both of the aforementioned seats were lost to Reform, with longstanding councillors losing their opportunity to represent their communities in the new administration. This reflects a national pattern. In areas deemed ‘unfavourable’ or as not having the ‘right demographics’, the party is surrendering ground to new radical alternatives.

Arun District should not be a place where we are losing ground. But even in the 2023 Local Elections, where we excelled across the country, we slipped back here. Too often when speaking to voters on the doorsteps during this year’s campaign, we heard the same message, ‘we like you locally, but we want to punish the government, so we will vote for Reform’. Without us having a clear national message, one with liberal ideas and values at its heart, we will continue to lose in areas like this that we need for future success. Currently, as we are not seen as important enough on the national scene to even be worth a protest vote for many

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged 2026 local elections | 2 Comments

The Green Threat

By Thomas Worth | Wed 18th March 2026 - 8:55 am

A post on X from Luke Tryl, the UK Director of More in Common, the other day changed how I viewed the rise of the Green Party. The post was in response to the latest polling from Ipsos, which had us sitting on just 9%, the lowest we’ve polled since the 2024 General Election.

In the post he said, ‘If the Lib Dems go into May with the Greens eating at their progressive flank it could well limit their gains in e.g. the new East and West Surrey councils, Sussex and other south east districts’. As a longstanding member in Sussex this obviously concerned me, so I set about trying to disprove his notion.

Unfortunately, I now believe he may be correct. Firstly, while we often think of the rise of the Greens eating away at the Labour vote, which it most certainly is, our polling is not untouched. According to YouGov, those who voted Lib Dem at the 2024 election, and say they will again, stood at 80% in May 2025 but now sit at only 68%. While this is better than most other parties, only 44% of 2024 Labour voters say they’ll vote for the party again; it is a notable shift in our polling. Almost all of this change has been caused by the Greens, with only 3% of 2024 Lib Dems saying they’d vote for the Greens in May 2025 to now, when the figure stands at 17%.

The steady march of the Greens amongst 2024 Lib Dems is likely to pose real problems in the local elections. While it isn’t likely the Greens will take seats from us, it is possible they will prevent us from making gains by splitting our vote and allowing Reform or a wounded Conservative Party to slip through the middle. In Sussex, signs of this happening were occurring even before Zack Polanski took over the Greens. At Horsham District Council’s Denne by-election in November 2024, a strong showing from the Greens meant that a safe Lib Dem ward was gained by the Tories. A similar story occurred at Arun District Council’s Marine by-election, where Reform gained the seat, with us placing a close second due to the Greens standing a candidate for the first time.

With the Greens now having a stronger base of voters, they are more likely to cause us damage in places like Sussex, where we need to be making gains to consolidate our General Election wins.

Other polling also paints a difficult picture. While Ed Davey has remained one of the most popular party leaders, he has now been overtaken by Zack Polanski in an important metric, those who say they ‘don’t know’. According to Ipsos, 36% of voters don’t know their opinion on Ed Davey, while 33% don’t know about Zack Polanski. While this isn’t a major difference, Ed Davey has been party leader for 6 years and still has over a third of people not holding an opinion on him. In comparison, Zack Polanski has only been the Green leader for just over 6 months and has already overtaken Sir Ed.