Few of us dreamed that we could come out of this election campaign with over 70 seats. The willingness of Liberal Democrats across the country to travel to target seats, the high quality of the local campaign organisation when we got there, determined efforts to raise more money than most local campaigns have ever thought of before, all helped to maximise our gains. But we must also give full credit to the high quality and sustained consistency of the national campaign.
I expect that many Liberal Democrats – naturally argumentative, with strong opinions of our own – have had their doubts about aspects of our national strategy over the past year or more: a focus on sewage and water pollution rather than Europe or Liberal values, a ruthless approach to target seat selection and to the demands placed upon them, stunts and photo-opportunities that attracted attention but didn’t seem sufficiently serious.
Well, the results have justified the hard discipline our central organisation imposed. Concentrated campaigning harvested tactical votes and used our limited funds effectively. Ed Davey’s standing in the polls rose as Sunak’s fell; he was seen to be the most human and approachable of the three main party leaders. And as to sewage: the issue of water pollution ‘cut through’, as the phrase goes, to a point where much of the Thames Valley has turned orange.
Liberal Democrats outside London may grasp only with difficulty how much smaller our professional staff is than those who have thronged Conservative and Labour headquarters in their hundreds: extensive media and digital teams, multiple fundraisers, ranks of policy advisers, organisers for national and local campaigns. Our headquarters has unavoidably remained small, within our limited budget – with its staff probably paid a good deal less than elsewhere, and helped by volunteers. I think I have had half our media team in my Lords office once or twice – and it’s not a large office!
We haven’t hired Australian or American outsiders to direct our national campaign: we train our own, and as readers know from party conferences we train each other. Our home-grown skills nevertheless compare well with our competitors. My respect for Dave McCobb dates from canvassing with him when he was a student in Hull. With infinitely less resources than Isaac Levido could call on at CCHQ, but with the assistance of many more willing volunteers, he has advised and motivated many superb constituency campaigns. And there’s a lovely story behind the construction of the by-election stunts which have gained welcome media attention over the past two years: beautifully (and inexpensively) constructed, verging on the amateur but nevertheless workable and highly effective. Mike Dixon and the entire headquarters team deserve our thanks and congratulations.
Now we’ve regained our position as the third-party challenger in British politics, there’s a lot of different work to do. The time to talk about our values and our longer-term international and domestic priorities is in the first two years of a new Parliament, not in the run-up to an election in which voters want to hear about more immediate concerns. We’ve done remarkably well on a budget that is miniscule compared to our two-party competitors, but we need now to recruit more members and donors to build on the success we’ve so far achieved. Against an unpopular Conservative government it’s not surprising that our gains have been overwhelmingly in the South of England; but with a Labour Government in power, as after 1997, there will be opportunities to make more progress in the North of England – which we cannot neglect if we claim to be a nationwide party. This dispirited election campaign has shown how deeply disillusioned much of the public is with Westminster politics. Unless we – and others – address their concerns and redress their grievances, Reform will mobilise them next time.
Meanwhile those of us who don’t have to retrieve stakeboards and close campaign offices can take a satisfied few days off before we start planning our next campaigns. Our new MPs will be gathering in Westminster next week to claim a larger role in the national political debate. This is a cheering advance for Liberalism. But illiberal forces are advancing as well, in Britain and elsewhere. Liberal values have to be fought for, and they are everywhere under attack.
* William Wallace is Liberal Democrat spokesman on constitutional issues in the Lords.
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11 Comments
William, I am getting lots of pop-up ads around this post about knee and hip pain after 50 – I think I have been Googling too much for solutions to all my election delivery injuries!!
Now we’re in a much stronger position, can we hope for defections from the Conservatives? They are likely to be chiefly providing opposition to each other over the next few months, rather than to the new government leaving us to have a chance to hold the government’s feet to the fire when necessary but also to be His Majesty’s loyal and constructive opposition.
That is a situation which ought to tempt defectors. We might also see if we can establish ways of working together with any of the Gaza war independents. I noticed one of them who came within spitting distance of unseating a Labour MP was a former, keen Lib Dem member back at the time of the invasion of Iraq.
The Lib Dem’s will need to figure out how to win over more one nation Tories if it wants to continue to grow. That probably means a strong vision around economic growth, tax cuts (later in this Parliament), focus on defence, tough on crime and a general reconnection with Liberal economic values. Also a strong but fair message on immigration. Not following reform but challenging them whilst promising to get numbers down.
I think the strategists, and leadership need to take an honest fully rounded look at the election campaign or we will have major problems next time around. I believe we lost 229 deposits, many seats we had previously held across the Midlands and North had terrible results. Only 27 2nd places (46 3rd’s), and only 13 seats where we was within 10% of the leading party.
Next time we wont have the anti tory feeling that helped us get such good results this time.
It was a very good campaign much better than I expected. I thought the turning point was the publishing of the manifesto where the mere mention of the single market caused the LD vote share to tick up by a few percent and stay there.
72 seats is an outstanding result, and I offer my heartiest congratulations to each and every one of them. I hope that they are all spending this weekend with their families to recover from the strain of the past six weeks, but tomorrow is not to early to start thinking out strategy for 2029 (not forgetting other elections which will take place in the interim). Please remember that there are 560 seats in Britain which LibDems did NOT win. Apart from the Speaker’s seat, we should ask why not.
The first requirement is to prepare to defend each one of those 72 seats. This will present a challenge, as it is likely that the right will not be so split next time (in one of a number of alternative ways). And one thing that has been proved conclusively by these results is that there is no longer such a thing as a safe seat. That applies to safe seats for the LibDems as much as it does for Conservatives or Labour. Society in this country is more polarised and suspicious than ever before, and with more access to national events through the digital media, the electorate is more volatile than ever before.
I said to Mark Pack before the election that strategy after polling day should concentrate, besides holding the seats won then, in looking at where the next gains should be sought in 2029. As Martin mentioned above, these is a worrying lack of seats where LibDem candidates came in second – only 13 seats where they are within 10% of the winner. In 2029 it should be the aim to swop the status of third-largest party for that of second-largest. That is a tough challenge.
I agree with you Rif, we need to start planning to get our message out to the remaining ‘disaffected Tories’. I believe that the Tories will split and those on the right of the Party will go to Reform.
Besides sending thanks and congratulations to our national campaigning team, I think we should be particularly thankful to Mark Pack. I saw him at work in a meeting in Bath some years ago and was aware of just how much thought had gone into the necessary strategy to start winning. It has proved to be the correct way to approach the first past the post system. Many thanks, Mark.
Hello Alison C,
I think you are mistaken when you put a large part of our election success down to Mark. The Lib Dems were massively successful in electioneering going way back to the 1980s, and got to 62 MPs and 24% of the vote in 2005. Now we are at 72 MPs but only have 12.2% of the vote.
The MP numbers are to be celebrated, but the 12.2% is way lower than it needs to be to sustain that number of MPs going forward. We now have a very big job to do building up our membership and infrastructure over the next five years to sustain and support the MPs.
Lots of the older members have always known how to do it because they were doing it up to 2010, but the mistakes our leaders made during coalition almost destroyed the entire party. It was relying totally on a few at the centre over that time which messed it up. If we embrace the diversity and depth of experience in the party and listen to them all, not just a single person and we will succeed.
I can’t help feeling that as these huge majorities pile in of advice in the past of the folly of massing huge majorities at the expense of marginal seats elsewhere. Targetting should include moving from seats already won to more marginal ones. That implies that targetting should be more fluid as expectations change.