It’s that time of year again. My social media feeds are all full of pictures of groups of people out canvassing or leafletting, of people handing in their nomination papers.
It must be the start of the “official” campaign for the huge array of national and local elections coming up on May 7th.
The Scottish Parliament, the Senedd in Wales and every Council seat in London is up for grabs along with local elections around the country from Liverpool to some places where they didn’t know until a few weeks ago that the elections were back on again.
I have to show you this gorgeous video from one of our brightest prospects in Scotland. David Green is standing in Caithness, Sutherland and Ross, where we already have Jamie Stone as the MP in much of the seat. I first knew David when he was involved in what was Liberal Youth Scotland (saying that in its appropriate historical context so no need to pay the “Liberal Youth Tax”). He is dynamic, compassionate, incredibly hard working – he won the prize at Scottish Conference for the most doors knocked on this year – and still just about young. One of his first jobs was for Charles Kennedy in the run up to his last election campaign. I would trust him with my life and I so want him to get into Holyrood.
This is personal for me as I spent my teenage years in Wick and I want that seat back from the SNP. There is no better person to win it back than David.
Our candidates are really upping their video game generally this year. You’ll be seeing a lot more over the next few weeks.
Yesterday Ed Davey kicked off our local Election campaign with a “Bake Off” event.
We care about the people we serve, the communities we live in and the country we love.
Today I launched our local election campaign with our amazing activists. Together we’re standing up for our local communities and against the politics of division. 🔸
— Ed Davey (@eddavey.libdems.org.uk) March 24, 2026 at 4:51 PM
He said:
We are part of our communities. We’re rooted in them, and we get things done. We care about the people we serve, the places we live and the country we love. Local champions, speaking up for our communities, fighting for the real change we need and getting things done.
Fighting for local health services – so you can see a GP or a dentist when you need one. Fighting for the environment, to stop water companies pumping filthy sewage into our rivers and onto our beaches. And fighting for British businesses, bringing life back to our high streets, and cutting the cost of living for everyone.
Some politicians would rather divide our communities than fix them. They’d rather point the finger of blame than get their hands dirty. They want to import Donald Trump’s nasty style of politics over here.
That’s not who we are. We’re different. We don’t do division. We do potholes and police officers, doctors’ appointments and cleaning up dirty rivers. We do the hard work that actually makes people’s lives better.
The Liberal Democrats will change our politics so we can fix the country we love. Every vote for the Liberal Democrats in May is a vote for a strong local champion who will bring our communities together and get the job done.
In England, the local election campaign is based around five key points:
Cut the cost of living: A plan to halve energy bills within a decade, saving households an average of £870 a year
Fix the NHS and care: Guarantee the right to see a GP within seven days (or 24 hours for urgent cases) and ending 12-hour A&E waits.
Rescue high streets: Give an emergency cut to VAT for hospitality businesses, to bring prices down and boost struggling high streets.
Clean up rivers: Ban water companies from dumping raw sewage into local rivers and coastal areas.
Restore community policing: Ensure visible, effective local policing to reduce crime.
It’s going to be a busy six weeks, brutal even, for candidates, organisers, canvassers, door-knockers, envelope writers, garden posterers and everyone who makes our campaigns run with such energy. It’s going to be a busy eleven weeks for agents who have to do all of the above and then have to get the expenses together and put them in.
Good luck to everyone. Let’s work hard, look after each other and get the best result we possibly can on 7th May.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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3 Comments
“In England, the local election campaign is based around five key points”. None of which are in the control of local authorities. Why?
The local election campaigns are based around one to five key points that are different in each campaign. The national campaign running at the same time cannot hope to address everything that matters locally let alone propose local solutions. The job of the national party is to improve the profile and approval ratings of the Liberal Democrat label that will appear on the ballot next to our candidates.
Last nights results were poor, some would say bad. We may well have a hard time in May being squeezed from the left, the Greens, and the right Tories and Reform.