Ed Lucas in the Times has noticed the Liberal Democrat fightback. The whole piece is behind a register-for-two-articles-a-week-wall, but here is a flavour.
Yet look again. The parrot is far from dead. It is squawking back to life, thanks to the Brexit vote, Labour’s meltdown and sellers’ remorse after the general election. Membership has rocketed, to more than 82,000, the highest in 20 years. The party is now out-fundraising Labour. As well as the parliamentary by-election victory in Richmond Park, Lib Dems have been scoring a stunning run of local successes, snatching council seats in such seemingly unpromising places as Rotherham, Sunderland, Sheffield and Kettering. At a national level, the Lib Dems finally have a clear cause, as the only national party, aside from the even weaker and less visible Greens, willing to mount a full-throated opposition to Brexit.
Ed goes into the Brexit resistance, the issue of EU citizens, and the role of the house of Lords, and notes a revival of the party at the grassroots.
The orange army is approaching the similarly daunting prospect of Manchester Gorton, held by the late Gerald Kaufman, in high spirits. Labour, which should win the by-election easily, cannot even agree a process to decide the process by which it will select its candidate. The Lib Dems have made their choice: a seasoned local campaigner and physics PhD called Jackie Pearcey. The party came fifth in 2015 but in the previous election came a strong second. The 10-1 odds against a Lib Dem victory in what will be a two-horse race look tempting.
I grew up in Longsight, Manchester Gorton, where Gerald Kaufman had been the MP longer than I have been alive. That any rival to Labour can be as short as 10-1 is remarkable. And remember, events that are 10-1 are extremely common. They happen all the time. Almost as often as Labour Party civil war.
Gorton Lab selection update, in English: there is a panel to decide the panel to decide the list. The panel to decide the panel can't decide
— Jennifer Williams (@JenWilliamsMEN) March 3, 2017
Home for the weekend, I think. Who’s with me?
* Joe Otten was the candidate for Sheffield Heeley in June 2017 and Doncaster North in December 2019 and is a councillor in Sheffield.
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8 Comments
1. Odds are now 5-1 at Hills and 6-1 at Ladbrokes.
2. Is Ed already out of date. I have noticed that the Conservatives picked up last Thursday after Copeland. It is going to be more difficult in May to get the large number of gains from that party. We should exercise some caution, what looked very good prospects only two weeks ago is a bit more muted at present. See how this weeks set of elections go, based on pre Copeland we might have expected a little haul of gains, but post Copeland we will do well to get one.
Spoiler – no political point will be made!
Good old Ed Lucas! He was a very enthusiastic Young Liberal in his first year at LSE while I was one of the old guard in my last year. As for odds, in GE2010 I opened at 100-1 in Westminster North and finished at 12-1! With that kind of a shift…
Look as if the by election will be on local election day in May. Labour not selecting until March 20th.
Paddy Ashdown replied today (Letters page 28) Young Liberal helps win in Yeovil.
Professor David Cutts of the University of Birmingham, says that “given the political climate today, it is certainly possible that we may see a 1920s Labour Liberal reversal in vote share come 2020 or sooner.
On the Daily Politics DUP MP Sammy Wilson postulated a Liberal Democrat coalition with either Labour or Conservatives and asked guest-of-the-day Tim Farron whether the Lib Dems would make the leadership of another party a red-line precondition (as is happening with the DUP’s Arlene Foster in negotiations with Sinn Fein after recent elections in Northern Ireland).
On reflection one could imagine a Labour Party led by Jim Callaghan and the Liberal-SDP Alliance led by the Asquithian Liberal Roy Jenkins, but would Paddy Ashdown have been able to co-operate with Margaret Thatcher? I have a vague memory that he said he would not. Reputedly Nick Clegg said to Gordon Brown in 2010 that “You lot are knackered” which GB disproved in the Scottish referendum.
Based on our performance in Local contests over the last 10 Months, I would expect us to make hundreds of gains on May 4th with a strong possibility of coming 2nd in the “Equivalent Vote Share”.
Our performance in Polls lags far behind our acheivement in actual Elections but that is not surprising. Voters who see us in action, during elections naturally get a very different impression from those who only see us through the lens of The Media.
Most journalists & as a result, most voters havent noticed our revival yet. That may shift after May 5th.
The BBC report from Yeovil seemed to indicate that voters who had previously voted Liberal Democrat were being put off by the emphasis on opposition to Brexit. South Somerset, which includes Yeovil, like much of the West of England, voted to leave the EU. It would be difficult to say if this was because of people who do not normally vote as seemed to be the case in some areas. Voting Liberal Democrat in the West of England has often been a protest vote which went to UKIP in 2015 and Leave in 2016.
`The Orange Army` – I lke that! It could, however have the wrong kind of connotations for those in Northern Ireland. How about the `Amber Army` then? More specific, and alliterative to boot!
We were reviving before the Brexit vote – big increase in membership, local by-election wins, a solidly good performance in the May 2015 local elections – and actually The Times did notice that back then.