The party’s review of the General Election campaign has been published this morning, so we can all put our feet up in front of the fire on a cold Winter’s afternoon and digest its findings.
The review was written by a panel chaired by Tim Farron. The other members were Cllr Ade Adeyemo, Paul Farthing, Cllr Donna Harris, Cllr Emma Holland-Lindsay, Mike O’Carroll and Cllr Sally Pattle.
In an email to members, Tim Farron said:
We have returned to the House of Commons as the third largest party, a real force to be reckoned with under Ed’s leadership.
While it goes without saying, nevertheless it is important to be said, the result was exceptional. As Chair of the Review, I offer my full and unreserved praise to Ed and to every single member, helper, donor and staff member who helped make it happen.
However, it would be foolish to not take the opportunity to explore what we could do differently next time to help make sure the next General Election result is even better than the last.
Our recommendations fall into three groupings:
How to repeat and expand our target seat successes, especially if the next General Election is in less favourable circumstances;
How to broaden our successes so that while targeting wins us seats our other activities strengthen the party across the country; and
Improving key internal processes, especially our Westminster candidates system.
There are challenging recommendations in our Review.
They will require of us all a willingness to be adaptable to change. However, none of the recommendations are written to be a criticism of past actions. They are based on review submissions and interviews and a strong desire of the Review team to ensure our strategy and processes are ready for the challenges ahead. We will also be following up with some further specific recommendations regarding membership.
We should be under no doubt there are difficult times ahead. While our greatly improved standing in Parliament offers a shining beacon of liberalism, across the UK and the world, extremism and populism are sadly becoming the norm. We, as a party, have the antidote to this, but we need to be election-ready for the fight ahead.
You can read the review here.
I am going to make a cup of tea and start reading through the document. I’ll put my thoughts in a new post.
Tim has also been talking to the Guardian about one of recommendations, namely that we shouldn’t have some sort of anti Tory progressive alliance. He said:
Liberator 427 is out and can be downloaded for free 
The Liberal Democrats will be launching a new attack ad following Kemi Badenoch’s comments yesterday that she will consider means testing the triple lock.
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