Yesterday Jim Coupland offered us his election predictions. Here is his follow-up.
Well, it’s done. We’ve seen the overall results of the local elections and what a brilliant result for us Liberal Democrats! Congratulations to all the fantastic Liberal candidates and members for their hard work and success on the campaign. As I said in my prior prediction, Reform made massive gains, and we made considerable gains too. Conservatives are the biggest losers and the public’s current view of the Labour government has been delivered… and they’re not happy.
Of course, these are only the local elections and the big one (the general election) is a few years away. However, these are important elections for three reasons:
- People mainly vote on national issues
Did Reform make all these gains because they had detailed policy on bins, parks and potholes? Of course not. The public, unfortunately, feel that Reform has the right answers to the national issues and are dissatisfied with the status quo. People, whether you define their votes as a protest vote or not, want change.
- Local issues
At the same time, local issues matter. These elections are a form of direct democracy that affect our lives. We Liberal Democrats are rightly impassioned by local politics. We wear Kemi Badenoch’s church roof insult as a badge of pride, the more Liberal councillors the better.
- Two party politics is over
The calls for proportional representation in Westminster should and will be bigger. People are fed up with Labour and the Tories, they want something different.
Going Forward
So, going forward, what do all these results mean? Where should we go as a party from this? Yes, we had a successful campaign, and we made net gains but where do we want to be after the next general election? We know that with first past the post, we can’t win the general election. That is a fantastical thought. I feel that in the long run, what we should aim for is another coalition. That would mean we, at least, have roughly the same number of MPs in the commons and rely on Labour making enough losses where they would need us to stay in Downing Street.
What can we do now to achieve this? To be honest, we’re doing a lot of the right stuff now. However, I would urge Sir Ed Davey to be tougher in opposition to Labour. Admittedly, that is hard. Right now, we have a complete contrast with the Conservatives whilst they are on their nightmarish right-wing adventures. Labour will do things in this parliament that we will support and rightly we should support those measures. On the policies that we disagree with; we should rightly fight against them. I know Sir Ed wants to be constructive in his criticisms, and he can be, but people need to see the clear disagreements we have. People need to know the true difference between Labour and us. Essentially, get tough at PMQ’s. Make headlines.
As Liberals, we also need to confront the topic that we are uncomfortable discussing… immigration. Polling shows that people feel immigration is one of the biggest issues Britain faces, the Reform wins are also evidence of this. In our 2024 manifesto, immigration was near the back of the book. We don’t just need a debate within our party on how to tackle the small boat gangs or how to deal with the backlog, we need to debate whether we see immigration as an issue in the country. Of course, we have completely different values to the right-wing so we must never degrade ourselves to become like them on this topic. So, we must decide whether we try to deal with the ‘issues’ of migrants or do we champion the benefits of immigration and proudly display it. Silence on immigration will not help us in the long run.
Whilst we know what we need to do, we must recognise the challenges we now face. Labour, if they are politically smart, will start treating Reform as the real opposition. They might start to tell progressive voters that if they want Farage out of Downing Street, Labour is the only ‘credible’ party to vote for. In a general election cycle, if the Reform movement is still alive, I can imagine left-leaning progressives becoming jittery and voting for what they see as the best of both evils. This would be a problem for us and the Greens. We need to find a way of politically combating this.
And we must remember to start voicing our opposition to Reform. With these election results, they will now have a track record to defend in local government. Let’s see how Reform councillors tackle the nitty gritty of local bureaucracy and detailed legislation on local issues… I suspect the results won’t be pretty. Let’s expose it and show the reality of Reform in office.
Overall, a good election but we should not rest on our laurels. Plenty more work to do.
* Jim Coupland is a member of the Liberal Democrats who joined us from the Labour Party. He describes himself as a "passionate Liberal".
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12 Comments
I’m a town councillor and i have seen various independent and even party councillors give up when they realise the slog of regular meetings. I know those elected will get paid which is a big incentive to stay the course but i wonder how many of these Reform councillors know what they’ve got into. Guess we’ll find out
“The calls for proportional representation in Westminster should and will be bigger. People are fed up with Labour and the Tories, they want something different.”
You can but hope. But where *are* the Lib Dems on this. The Ed Davey who once said ““I believe that reforming our voting system is the biggest and most important way to mend our broken politics, and I am determined to achieve it” didn’t mention the topic in either of his last two leaders speeches to conference and I can’t see any reference on here to anything significant he’s said on this since the General Election.
Would it happen quickly. Possibly not. But remember there was once someone who was committed to the UK leaving the EU. He put his platform to the electorate at the Eastleigh by-election in 1994 and polled 952. That man was Nigel Farage.
952 in an Eastleigh by-election. Not a bad effort for a first timer that. Rejoin the EU polled just over 120 in Runcorn. It’s a start I suppose.
Like all politicians when fptp does you favours the call for electoral reform is barely a whisper.
Labours big majority is built on sand. The cut in the WFA and the reasoning behind it was political suicide. It won’t be forgiven or forgotten.
“People mainly vote on national issues” – surely that is only true when nobody engages with voters on local issues and explains why their vote matters locally?
In the places where voters had Focus leaflets stuffed through their letterbox and had a doorstep chat with a Lib Dem, they voted for us in reasonable numbers.
I think it’s fair to say that most some vote on national issues and some on local and there’s a strong correlation between that and whether they voted Reform or Lib Dem. When reform voters were asked why, they generally answered “migrants” when ITV asked a Lib Dem voter, he said “because I live in Bushey”.
When we have just got over-represented under FTP is exactly when we should be calling for STV. I missed the “Just a bit of fun” projection of the projected national share on to a general election so I put the figures into Electoral Calculus. It gave Reform 376 seats, Labour 113, us 71 and the Tories 12. Right now, the two largest parties in the HOC need PR and the only party that has reason to oppose it has just five seats.
Incidentally have you noticed that the most common argument against STV (it removes the link between MPs and local communities) has been blown out of the water by the government redefining “local communities” as areas with at least 500,000 population?
We are doing okay under FPTP. If it is working for us why change it. The Liberal Party in Canada proposed PR then dropped it when they got power, probably a good job considering election results once in a majority.
Time to hammer Labour and to be seen to be doing so, that will be far more effective instead of going on about PR.
@theakes – You’re right that we have played politics well recently with FPTP but 2029 will be a different challenge. More seats to defend and there are less constituencies to gain with our current strategy. In the long term, this strategy won’t be sustainable.
@theakes: “We are doing okay under FPTP. If it is working for us why change it” And that logic is exactly the reason the awful unrepresentative FPTP system survives: Whoever is in Government thinks, It’s working for us, why change it? – and then when it stops working for them and it hits home how unrepresentative it is, it’s too late.
Electoral reform it’s not something worth banging on about too much right now because not of interest to most voters and will just make us look out of touch. But it should be in our manifesto and if we do ever get into a position to introduce it (possibly by working with Reform on that issue if they do well at the next election) then we absolutely should prioritise that.
Thank you for an important article!
Are electoral structures there to benefit politicians or the community?
Might the numbers of those not voting indicate that increasing numbers are of the opinion that the current system does not serve them?
Might we not be a true democracy but an oligarchy with “we’re a democracy stickers”?
@theakes Yes, you said your undemocratic and short-sighted opinion on this before, I refer you to the answer I gave then!
That stirred up a bit of a hornets nest, shows even Liberal Democrats cannot agree about everything. I think going on about PR is a waste of time, once a party gets into power with FPTP whoever they are, it might be us, it soon gets put on the back burner. Tragic that maybe but………. There are bigger fish to fry.