Editor’s Note: In November party members will be voting to elect our next Party President. At Lib Dem Voice we welcome posts from each of the candidates – one to launch their candidature plus a maximum of one per week during the actual campaign.
The news that our membership has halved in five years, is not simply a statistic to be dismissed or explained away, it’s a call to action. As Liberal Democrats, we must confront this reality with both honesty and determination.
It’s been at the heart of my campaign as Vice President, because if we’re going to improve diverse representation we must fix engagement. We need to start at our grassroots.
Let me be clear: this is not about diminishing the extraordinary achievements of our parliamentary team or our incredible councillors. Our 72 MPs and thousands of councillors are delivering real change in communities across the UK, holding this government to account and winning on key campaigns from justice to the environment. But electoral success and organisational vitality don’t always go hand in hand. We can celebrate our electoral gains whilst acknowledging that our membership base requires urgent renewal.
The challenge before us is fundamental. As we’ve rebuilt our parliament party and council base, we’ve treated membership growth as an administrative afterthought rather than the lifeblood of our movement. We’ve assumed that electoral victories would automatically translate into organisational strength. The numbers tell us otherwise. Whilst we’ve been focused, rightly, on winning seats, we’ve inadvertently allowed our grassroots foundations to weaken.
A thriving membership base is our connection to communities, and our source of renewal. The drop speaks to a hunger for authentic political engagement, for movements that feel genuinely participatory rather than transactional. Many people are seeking parties that offer meaningful involvement, not just occasional requests for donations or signatures on petitions.
As Vice President, I would implement a comprehensive renewal strategy built on three interconnected pillars.
First, we must revolutionise how we welcome and engage with local communities.
Currently, too many people join our party and hear nothing for weeks. Their enthusiasm dissipates in the silence. We have communities desperate for solutions left feeling politically homeless. At the heart of this is about supporting candidates and campaigners with concrete practical support and training programmes. This means practical assistance: training, resources for accessible venues, translation support, and funding for targeted outreach to underrepresented communities.
Second, we must unlock diversity from the widest range of backgrounds. My work with the Lib Dem Campaign for Race Equality and Chinese, East & South East Asian Liberal Democrats has shown me how transformative genuine inclusion can be. But inclusion isn’t simply about representation at the top, it’s about ensuring every local party has the resources, training and support to become genuinely welcoming spaces. It’s about bringing together AOs, local parties and organisations who have been doing great to give them the recognition and resources they deserve, while also sharing best practices across the party.
Third, we must make membership meaningful. People don’t join political parties to receive newsletters; they join to make change happen. We need to create multiple pathways for engagement, a place where everyone from traditional campaigning to digital activism, from policy development to community organising. Local parties require practical support and resources to run engaging activities that fit around modern lives.
This is about building the movement we need to deliver the transformative change Britain deserves and pushing back on populism. Every challenge facing our country from the climate emergency to rebuilding our NHS, from tackling inequality to reforming our broken political system, requires sustained grassroots mobilisation.
My experience spans every level of our party. I’ve organised local campaigns, stood for council, worked with diverse communities across the country, and now serve as an MP. I understand viscerally how grassroots energy translates into electoral success. But I also recognise where we’re falling short.
The Vice President role exists precisely for moments like this. It’s designed to be an official champion for ethnic minorities, yes, but also a bridge between our parliamentary presence and our grassroots reality. I would use this platform to drive genuine organisational renewal, working with state parties, local parties and headquarters to implement systematic change.
We face a choice. We can treat this membership challenge as a temporary embarrassment to be managed with better marketing, or we can recognise it as an opportunity for fundamental renewal. I choose renewal.
The Liberal Democrats have always been at our best when we’ve combined electoral effectiveness with grassroots vitality. We can reclaim that tradition. But it requires leadership that understands both the urgency of our situation and the practical steps needed to address it.
This is my commitment: to grow our party inclusively, to make membership meaningful, and to build the grassroots movement our values and our country deserve. The work begins now.
* Victoria Collins is MP for Harpenden and Berkhamsted and a candidate for Vice President
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13 Comments
Thank you Victoria for emphasising grassroots development. One contribution would be for MPs to spend a little less time in Parliament and go round the country helping contact between local parties and people outside the party. When I made this point at the Q&A at conference the response was that Farage gets criticised for not being in Parliament. BUT that misses the point; Farage gets around with his supporters in local public arenas and hence boosts their local profile and morale. People do not hear about our few excellent achievements in Parliament let alone our many speeches, so we must boost our local profiles and door knocking where there is a better chance of being heard.
Victoria makes a persuasive case, but I must add as a resident of Scotland living in a constituency that had Liberal/Lib Dem MPs for almost sixty years up until 2015, the party needs to stretch its vision and ambition beyond the leafy suburbs of “Middle England”. If it doesn’t it will shrivel away once again when the Tories rediscover their mojo. – as they inevitably will sooner or later.
Yes, Yes. Victoria has absolutely hit the nail on the head. Party membership is declining because for the average member, who is not a member of twelve different committees, not an insider, membership can be a very unsatisfactory, frustrating experience. The party has a very good “Boost Guide” that explains how the party, locally and nationally, should deal with new members but the excellent contents bear little or no relation to reality.
But I would go further. We need to start engaging with the communities we live in. We are citizens not subjects. Our right to be involved in local decision making is absolute, not a gift bestowed at the whim of local politicians. Our democracy is young. It is only just over a hundred years ago that all adults got the right to vote. But it is already out of date as a better educated, more affluent public feel increasingly disenfranchised and seek refuge in the economic fantasies of the left or the ethno-nationalism of the right. And we think another Focus highlighting the state of local roads will do the trick ?
Victoria Collins,
If elected Vice President will you give up being our spokesperson on Science, Innovation and Technology?
Will you post comments on LDV?
What will you try to do to make sure motions from local parties and members are selected for debate at Federal Conference over those submitted by MPs?
What will you try to do to publicise submissions on policy consultation papers and try to ensure the ideas in the submissions are included in the final policy paper?
How will you support local parties to recruit members?
Large increases in political party membership in recent times include Reform, the Greens after Zack Polanski’s election as leader, Labour after Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership, and “Your” party with Zarah Sultana and Corbyn. The common ground looks like anti establishment & anti neo liberalism.
Although I have remained a member for many decades, back in 2016 I had the opportunity to become active again.
This has been a supremely disappointing experience, bugged by a consistent failure by the local party that covers where I live to engage in any form of membership and organisation building. I aspire to being nothing more than a foot soldier – clearly that is not valued – it is the experience of others too, so they don’t renew their membership. Surprise, surprise.
I have been fortunate in that I have now been able to mask my frustration by moving my membership to an address in another area where, sadly, I am too distanced to be of any practical assistance.
I did ask HQ if I could simply be a member without being tagged to my original local party. They said it was not. But why not?! Surely there should be flexibility!
My experience is that there can be a significant management shortfall in terms of motivating people. There is no way I could recommend anyone joining the LDs locally, only to be met a wall of self-serving selfishness.
I wonder how significant membership is ? In my part of Stratford on Avon constituency last year, the vast majority of deliveries in a very rural area were not members but very keen to help Manuela win. They chose not to take membership for a variety of reasons but they were still active participants in a very successful campaign.
We have always had elected officers committed to membership growth. And yet for all the things we can “do better”, what really makes a difference is the political message of the party. We saw that when the party opposed the second war in Iraq and when the party opposed Brexit. Our membership shot up.
We need something like that today.
I agree with Chris Cory that campaigning on local issues like the state of the roads is not enough. In my 24 years experience as an activist and councillor there was a time when local campaigning produced excellent results but it was not sustained. One reason I think was that we ignored big national issues so more and more people said to us on the doorstep “We support you locally but we cannot vote for you to be in Parliament”. When the Tories started to campaign hard on local as well as national issues, they overtook us.
There is one thing missing from Victoria post .What on earth do the Liberal Democrats stand for these days . Clear messages that resonate encourages people join and creates the gene pool for potential activists , just appealing to middle England where ever that is or disaffected Tories is not going to cut it . It will also miss the boat on the growing number of disaffected Labour voters who share our social liberal values , no we need substance as well as process to succeed in attracting new members .
It should be self-evident that campaigning for the virtues of “Middle England” is by definition going to alienate voters in Scotland and Wales (not to mention Northern Ireland). Even the use of “Middle” is pathetic, as it reinforces the views foremost in the public mind that we are simply a compromise between Labour and Conservative principles. Liberals are different from both of these parties! Please find a better slogan, specifically using the virtues of Liberalism.
Membership is important, but much more significant is involvment in the local community in which you aspire to be elected. And involvement does not mean a campaign lasting only for the month before polling day! Intending candidates need to be seen and heard in their communities for – if possible – a year or years before close of nominations. Otherwise the electors will rightly assume that your candidates lack commitment, both before and after the election. You have to PROVE that commitment in advance.
Neil, we do indeed stand for the social liberal values that you mention, and the Preamble to our Constitution is always a good starting point in explanation. Further statements, whether brief or encompassing, are being discussed in the Social Liberal Forum Council, where we have a sub-group considering our party’s vision and identity – comments on which will of course also be welcomed.
Personally, and as a suggested reply to Geoffrey Payne’s wish for a striking, memorable action (hello, Geoff!) I am going to commend to our members that we agree to campaign for an urgent initiative on developing much more affordable housing in the near future, probably as part of the new towns which it is our policy to develop and which the government is planning, and including much factory-built
modular housing. The scale of crisis in the supply of new homes nationally should now I believe be tackled as it was after WW2. I hope Victoria may agree.
Thanks all so much for your engagement and thoughtful comments. Some great ideas and food for thought.