In the 1950s and 1960s, the leader of the Liberal party, Jo Grimond, believed our long-term aim should be to supplant the Labour party as the main party of the left in Britain. Over half a century later, our current leader, Sir Ed Davey, has said that it is the Tories that we should push into third party status.
Both these strategies assumed that the Labour-Conservative duopoly was too strong to be completely removed. Over the past couple of years, this assumption has been put to the test by Nigel Farage and Reform UK (RUK). Now the old duopoly is weaker than ever before, as support for Labour and the Conservatives crumbles. RUK’s rise to prominence should alarm liberals, given their policies on taxation, immigration, renewable energy, and flags, but there is a silver lining to this large cloud. The rise of RUK presents a golden opportunity for the Liberal Democrats to eclipse both Labour and the Conservatives in terms of political power and relevancy.
During the recent local elections, only RUK and the Liberal Democrats exhibited any material amount of growth, with the Conservatives reeling from a wipeout and Labour sliding backwards. As such, in many places, a RUK-Liberal Democrat contest for power will be the defining lens through which politics is viewed. In Cornwall, Gloucestershire, and Devon RUK is likely to be the official opposition to a Liberal Democrat led administration. The Liberal Democrats are also now the second largest party in many areas where RUK is the largest party, including Durham, Warwickshire, and Kent. These sorts of contests will be very beneficial for us. According to YouGov, the Liberal Democrats stand to benefit more from tactical voting against RUK than either Labour or the Conservatives.
Positioning ourselves as the main challengers against RUK in the eyes of the electorate, whether through our presence in local government or in terms of national political momentum, would therefore be immensely beneficial. Our messaging should also make strong reference to how we are opposed to RUK in terms of policies and values, enabling us to rally many anti-RUK voters under an anti-populist and anti-reactionary platform of kindness, optimism, and policy expertise rooted in liberal values. This strategy doesn’t necessitate any major policy changes (although having a stronger co-determination policy could be beneficial). Rather, it requires us to frame our most salient policies as the main alternative RUK’s, enabling us to win support from those wanting to keep RUK out of power, including many current supporters of Labour and the Tories, as well as Green party voters.
Politics throughout the developed world has been shifting into a new paradigm of political competition for the past couple of decades. In the mid-twentieth century, it was primarily centred on a contest for power between Social Democratic/Socialist parties and Christian Democratic/Conservative/Liberal Conservative parties. The new paradigm includes a reactionary, populist, and anti-immigrant party. Germany’s AFD, the Swedish Democrats, France’s National Rally, Poland’s Law and Justice party, Spain’s Vox, and the PVV in the Netherlands all fit this mould to varying extents. In many cases, they are draining support from traditional left-of-centre and right-of-centre parties, who are increasingly incapable of challenging them.
What political force can emerge to act as a counterweight to this kind of reactionary politics remains an open question.
Liberalism can be that force if we liberals are bold enough to seize the moment.
* William Francis is Chair of the Ealing Young Liberals
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36 Comments
Excellent article.
I think the key positioning for our Party should be:
– socially liberal, with a strong commitment to individual liberty and the rule of law, unlike both Conservatives and RUK.
– economically liberal, promoting free market capitalism against the inherent statism of both Labour and RUK.
– internationally liberal, recognising that the UK has no future as an island that pretends the rest of the world can be ignored. Many problems need international solutions, and the UK is an integral part of Europe. Neither the Conservatives nor RUK believe this, and Labour is afraid to say that they do believe it.
I agree with Mohammed Amin., almost word for word.
I would add reference to human rights to his first paragraph, and anti-authoritarianism in the first and second
Something needs to be done about the shocking degree of inequality that exists, not only in the UK, but also globally. It’s this inequality which is proving so beneficial to populist parties such as Reform UK.
@Mohammed Amin
Whilst I agree with points 1&3, I think we need to be careful with how we present ourselves on economic liberalism. For many who are liberals on international and social issues, it is associated with the dark satanic mills, 1930s style means testing, and Thatcherism.
A more ordoliberal approach to economics, which the party seems to be drifting towards with “smart regulation” and its brand of industrial policy, could be framed as a more free market approach than RUK’s support for nationalisation, if not a better way of being free market compared to RUK’s desire for Truss-style unfunded tax cuts.
One potentially very effective challenge to RUK statism is their welfare policies. They have called for withdrawing benefits for the unemployed if they cannot find employment within 4 months or accept a job after 2 offers. This deeply coercive policy can be constructed with the Lib Dem position of using positive incentives and help us build support amongst poorer voters.
https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/reform-uk-election-manifesto-welfare-benefits-promises
I agree with the article and the comments I have read. I would just add that we need to have policies to appeal to the majority of voters rather than niche issues or else we will find RUK positioning itself as representing mainstream opinion.
Having been around a little longer than most, I have to say I recognise and welcome the optimism that many Lib Dems show regarding our chance of making “the big breakthrough.” Whether it was David Steel with his “go back to your constituencies and prepare for government – Llandudno 1981, or Nick Clegg with his “double the number of Lib Dem MPs at Westminster by the election after next.” there have periodically been breakthroughs and grand plans to smash the old two parties’ duopoly, and they have always floundered on hard reality.
Ultimately the one reason they flounder is because they are based on the conception that “liberalism” is our big electoral asset, and if only we focussed on getting our liberal policies out there for the public to see, they would flock to us. Sadly, this has never been the case for at least 90% of the population.
Instead, the one reason we were increasingly successful in that period was because we were the most competent of local politicians successfully running councils for the benefit of all.
Ultimately what the vast majority of people want is honest, competent government – not the bullying dogma of socialism, old Labour, new Labour, arrogant selfish Tory and its free marketeers, the ERG, NRG, Green or even nationalist.
If we retreat back into just being simply the best liberals we can be, we will be back to just being another minor political party.
Libdems £1000 fine for noisy phones is one of the best policy ideas in ages. I’ll definitely vote for them if that’s in the manifesto
I’m sorry but I disagree about nationalisation. The first person to nationalise an industry was Gladstone, who brought the Post Office into public ownership and you’d hardly call him a statist. Some industries are natural monopolies and to leave them in the unfettered control of private industry leads to the sort of scandals we now see in the water industry and the poor public service in the railways has now led to them, slowly, coming back into public ownership. Now we can argue about the form of public ownership, but if we are to have decent public services, they must be run for the good of the public and not for private profit. I think that BT was correctly privatised, but power, transport, water/sewerage are better run by not-for-profit companies of some sort and heavily regulated.
Please remember that even Adam Smith, widely regarded as the prophet of laissez faire capitalism believed that it needed to be regulated by the government to ensure a level playing field.
@ William Francis. I hope, William, that our party should not be identified at all with economic liberalism. The difficulty of hoping to replace the Conservative party – and I agree, I have never known it in such a weak state as today’s – is that we might become known as a Right-of-centre party, whereas, as the successors of John Maynard Keynes, I hope we will identify as definitely Left-of-centre. This could usefully be developed in debate at Bournemouth in September, and we should also challenge the Government on their Rightist tendencies.
@Mick Taylor
I was mainly referring to RUK’s stance on nationalising the steel industry rather than the utilities. The main issues with nationalisation are that the issue of poor management is seldom addressed as the public and private sector managers are drawn from the same places (particularly an issue many noticed in the post-war consensus years), and the issue of treasury orthodoxy making long-term investment difficult.
@Katharine Pindar
I think it’s certainly possible to be identified with some elements of Economic Liberalism and be left of centre at the same time. The most promising policy prescriptions of Economic Liberalism are planning reform and free trade, which are certainly compatible with Keynesian demand management, greater state capacity, and a strong welfare state.
This is a good article but it does ignore the established historical fact that when Labour have done well in general elections (GE) then so have we. When they have done poorly in GEs then so have we. The electorate seem to have been happy to hold their nose in these local elections and vote Reform to send Labour a strong message that they are unhappy with the party’s direction of travel. The question still remains though as to whether they will still be happy to do so when the next GE comes. “A week is a long time in politics” but three years plus is even longer!
@ Katharine,
“The difficulty of hoping to replace the Conservative party …..”
All parties are in a state of flux at the moment. I doubt the Lib Dems will replace the Conservative Party but, if they look to be facing oblivion at the next election, they are likely to split with the right probably forming an electoral alliance with Reform and the rest looking for an electoral alliance with the Lib Dems. Alliances can become new parties relatively easily.
The Labour Party is effectively split now with the left being openly hostile to the the Starmer leadership. I expect we will see a new party of the left emerge before the next election. The Labour right could well be crushed with the survivors looking for an alliance with an emerging centrist party.
So we’ll likely see something similar to what has already happened in France with new parties of the left, centre and right emerging.
@ Mick Taylor 16th May 2025 7:32pm. I fully agree with you about the need for public ownership (not for profit) of public services.
I wouldn’t spend too much time being negative about other parties.
I would concentrate on putting forward the Liberal and Progressive offer and ultimately if the voters want it they will vote for it.
Being too negative about other parties can come across as being sanctimonious or holier-than-thou and can be counterproductive, especially if the voters feel like they are being denigrated too.
@ Peter Martin. Why you should imagine our party could face oblivion at the next election is as obscure as to why you have burst into italics! The Liberal Democrats are rising … I hope we will work with the leftist part of the Labour government.
@ William Francis. An interesting reply, William, which I will leave to economists to argue on, better than I can.
The biggest issue for all of us is increasingly the environmental catastrophe that is widely recognised as inevitable and, as yet, is not being addressed. GDP cannot continue unabated and Capitalism has to be modified in order to make effective, planet saving, change.
GDP cannot continue to rise…
“Vote Liberal Democrat for permanent recession” is not, I suggest, a vote winning strategy outside of an extremely small portion of the electorate who are already well off and can afford to be a little bit poorer, making it a luxury belief.
I would suggest that the policy is that we should find ways to ensure that GDP continues to rise but does so in a way that is sustainable and takes people with us.
Environmental support is broad but shallow. People are happy to be Green provided they don’t have to pay for it.
A failure to recognise this would be electorally disastrous.
Too many, mainly younger people, identify with the Tory propaganda about nationalised industries. Too much has been forgotten about the plus sides of public ownership. For example their role in maintaining full employment. British Rail, contrary to the myths spread about them by the right wing media, was probably the most efficient rail service in Europe with an enviable safety record. In the severe winters in the seventies, rail services kept going when buses and cars had ground to a halt. A far cry from today when we suffer from ‘the wrong sort of snow’. Water and sewerage ran much better when run by local authorities and in the early days of publically owned water companies when sewerage was dealt with by contracted local authorities.
The salaries paid to those running nationalised industries were relatively modest and there were no such things as bonuses. People who ran our public services did so with a piublic service ethos, not to line their and shareholders’ pockets.
That isn’t to say there weren’t problems, but privatisation didn’t solve them and made many services no better or often worse.
@ Katharine,
Sorry, only the first line should have been in italics. Forgot to cancel it in the text!
I was meaning its the Tory Party which is likely to face oblivion with the party splitting. A likely scenario is the right forming an alliance with Reform and the remainder forming an alliance with the Lib Dems. This will pull your party to the right as you fear.
@Mick Taylor,
Scottish Water is publicly run. It’s arguably the worst of the water companies; only monitorng a tiny percentage of sewage sites. And a dreadful record even on those.
Likewise Welsh Water – a mutual – has a very poor record indeed.
Contrary to what you say, post-privatisation, the newly privatised companies did improve across the board in terms of supply and environmental indicators.
Why? Thatcher wrote off existing water company debt and therefore the new companies could take on fresh debt to invest heavily in water infrastructure.
Changing ownership will make no difference to water company performance unless it’s accompanied by new investment.
The problem with nationalisation is that vast amounts of capital must first be spent on buying private assets.
@Anthony Harris: it’s false that LDs only perform well electorally when Labour does. You have forgotten 2001, 2005, 2010.
@Slamdac
“I would suggest that the policy is that we should find ways to ensure that GDP continues to rise but does so in a way that is sustainable and takes people with us.”
Can you please suggest some ways in which continuing rising GDP is sustainable?
“Environmental support is broad but shallow. People are happy to be Green provided they don’t have to pay for it. ”
As we work our way through remaining fossil fuel resources the price of those resources will rise. People will have to pay more or use less.
Fossil fuels are not a renewable resource on human lifespan timescales.
There may be new fossil fuels being deposited somewhere on this one planet we know to be habitable by humans, but it takes very many times the length of a human life and the right temperatures and pressures are needed as well.
We’re using fossil fuel resources much faster than they can be replaced naturally.
Taking on Reform means relentless focus on the concerns of the vast bulk of the electorate: if we become focused on issues that excite LD activists such as PR, Single Market, identity politics, we will be swept away by a purple tide.
The leadership got it right at the ’24 GE with its focus on issues that touch everybody: health, care, water pollution.
When I hear calls for being more expressly liberal, I’m favour of that, if it means grounding our plans for social care, for example, in principles of positive liberty. I’m totally against if it means focusing on LD activist pet issues. That way lies the comfort zone and electoral oblivion.
@Chris Moore, I don’t quite understand your point when you say: “@Anthony Harris: it’s false that LDs only perform well electorally when Labour does. You have forgotten 2001, 2005, 2010.” Are you for example suggesting Labour didn’t do well in the 2001 General Election? It actually won 412 seats in that General Election (same as in last year’s General Election result), but most significantly got 40.7% of the vote in 2001 compared to 33.7% in 2024. And in the 2005 General Election it still won a 64 seat majority with 355 seats and a vote of 35.2% – again higher than the vote share it got in last year’s General Election.
@Mick Taylor
Given how the Liberal party was often critical about how nationalisation worked in practice (from the Unservile State group to Peter Hain’s Red Guards), I find it strange that any non-positive view of nationalisation can be viewed as being exposed to “Tory propaganda”.
I find it questionable that managers of state-owned enterprises were inherently better than those in private enterprises. They were generally drawn from the same social and educational backgrounds (Greats Oxbridge graduates with little technical knowledge), were often conservative when adopting new technologies and practices, and could be extremely negligent (as seen with the Aberfan disaster). They may not have received that much in the way of pay, but no doubt their very valuable index-linked pensions would have made a very large part of their compensation, and in the era of ultra-high top marginal tax rates, managers in private industry weren’t receiving very high salaries either.
That’s not to say privatisation is inherently better. Indeed, most of the benefits of privatisation occurred due to structural reforms that were implemented ahead of privatisation, implying that it was possible to improve various industries without privatising them.
(See Privatization and Economic Performance Throughout the UK Business Cycle: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2487882)
I would also add that technically, municipal ownership of water and sewage is not an example of nationalisation but municipalisation, and does have many benefits compared to nationalisation (such as bringing decision making to a local level, and not being under the thumb of the Treasury – though this was more of a benefit when local authorities had greater fiscal autonomy).
@Mark:
You kindly make my point for me,
Following the logic of your argument, you’re then saying that Labour’s 2024 result was positively bad! worse than 2001 and 2005, yet the LDs had their
best result – in seat terms since early 20th century.
The idea LDs perform badly when Labour does is not supported by the evidence.
Think of it staristically: the correlation between Labour and LD outcomes in either seats or % vote is at best weakly correlated.
The impact of more parties competing – brrakdown of 2 party politics – is highly likely to further weaken any correlation.
Mick Taylor states that British Rail had an “enviable safety record.” The idea that the railways were safer in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s or 1980s than they are now is not the case. Just look at the figures for deaths of rail workers. In 1974 there 42 fatalities, but in 2021 it was 5 and 2022 it was 2. And lets not forget about terrible rail accidents affecting passengers. Just in my borough of Lewisham there were 90 passengers killed on 4 December 1957- with a further 173 people injured. The safety record of the privatised rail industry (for both train workers and passengers) in the last 30 years has been safer than the safety record of nationalised British Rail in the previous 40 years. However, the real issue about rail safety turns far more on regulation, use of technology, good staff training, proper investigations of rail accidents, and good legislation such as the 1974 Health and Safety Act. Indeed going back a century in 1920 420 train workers died under an industry that was then in private hands. Claims that either public ownership or indeed private ownership automatically lead to passenger and worker safety in any industry are somewhat simplistic – indeed the point about the record of National Coal Board and Aberfan is well made by William Francis. This is some data of railway safety over the years: https://www.orr.gov.uk/search-news/175-years-making-britains-railways-safer#:~:text=Every%20year%2C%20railway%20inspectors%20looked%20at%20accidents%20and,cabs%2C%20and%20rules%20for%20emergency%20evacuation%20from%20trains
@ Mark,
The rail network was only in private hands for the privatisation of British Rail in 1994 up until 2001. The Hatfield crash, which was blamed squarely on the criminal mismanagement of Railtrack (the privately owned company) , of the previous year forced its renationalisation.
This is how the Telegraph described it shortly afterwards:
“The death of four passengers in the Hatfield rail crash was a ‘disaster waiting to happen’ a manslaughter trial against five rail executives and their companies has heard.
The risks of damaged tracks were ignored, resulting in the deaths four years ago, an Old Bailey jury was told today. ,,,,,The GNER express was derailed by a broken rail….
The executives – three from Railtrack, which is now Network Rail, and two from Balfour Beatty – are accused of manslaughter and breaching health and safety regulations. Balfour Beatty is also accused of manslaughter and Network Rail is charged with health and safety breaches. The crash in October 2000, caused by a broken rail an inquiry later found, happened a year after the Paddington disaster and led to widespread speed restrictions being imposed across the network. A year after the derailment, Railtrack was abolished by the Government and replaced with Network Rail.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1482439/Hatfield-crash-was-disaster-waiting-to-happen.html
@Peter: Accidents on the railway can be caused either because of failures by the infrastructure (as you say, publicly owned since 2002, or by the trains/train operators (mostly privately run until very recently). Serious accident rates from both sources are now at very low levels compared to BR days. On the other hand, the cost of running the railways is much higher – in part because of much higher safety standards and much more bureaucracy around safety then existed previously. The lesson appears to be that safety isn’t particularly related to whether the operator is private or nationalised, but is strongly related to the prevailing culture within the industry and on how much we are prepared to spend on safety (money which ultimately comes either from Government subsid or from passengers’ fares)
@ Simon,
I mostly agree. The other big factors leading to improved safety is both the semi-automation of the signalling system and electronic aids in the cab which can greatly reduce the risk of human error.
I really don’t know how anyone could have been expected to safely drive the old steam locos at the speeds they did. The forward visibility was much reduced compared with what is normal now. There was often a boiler in the way, and there were no effective windscreen wipers.
So it’s impossible to compare standards now to what they were in the 1950s.
One of the problems with privatisations in general, not just with the railways, is the belief that every maintenance task can safely be contracted out via the tendering system. We know that price is going to be the main factor and those making the decision will have often insufficient practical knowledge of how well these will be completed. The teams that used to have the knowledge, being no longer deemed to be necessary.
‘Politics throughout the developed world has been shifting into a new paradigm of political competition for the past couple of decades.’ This ignores the effects of media and social media manipulation across the broad spectrum of digital dis-information delivery. The right spectrum no longer reports, it focuses on inciting emotion, this is a powerful tool that is difficult to counter unless there are enough digital outlets that offer a more attractive alternative.
With new and exciting MPs and Councillors we have the oppertunity to promote a New and Refreshed Liberalism . Time to get off of our past laurels and demonstrate some fresh messages on how our politics are positive and dynamic and yes progressive .
The problem with this fascination of statistical possibilities – particularly mind boggling under our ridiculous voting system – is that the election of a Reform government would be from a liberal point of view, a disaster. Lets not lose sight of that.