This morning I headed into Edinburgh at the crack of dawn to take part in a panel on Radio Scotland show Good Morning Scotland.
I got a bit of a shock at the station as there was hardly anywhere to park, which I hadn’t expected for that hour. The reason became clear when I got to the platform and saw lots of people in running gear, heading into town for the Great Edinburgh Run.
I have to say it is much easier to be discussing your election campaign when your leader is on the form of your life and when voters are repeating your campaign messages back to you on the doorsteps and you are winning the campaign with fantastic events involving seals, planes, canoes and happy children in a soft play area. You can listen to what I had to say here from about 1 hour 41 minutes in.
People like the optimism, boldness and fun of our campaign. They like the penny on tax for education, investing from nursery to college. They like the investment in mental health that we’d bring. They like Willie Rennie. He had people in Alloa, not the most ardent Lib Dem stronghold, come up to him yesterday and tell him they were voting for us for the first time. It feels better out there than it has for a long time. I’m not going to make any wild predications, but I think it is reasonable to think that it is possible for us to send a bigger contingent to Holyrood than we currently have. We need to build on the early success of the campaign over the next three weeks.
I wanted to concentrate on us and the good things about our campaign, but if I had had the chance to talk about the others, I’d have taken the SNP to task on their utter timidity. They have been going on about getting more powers for Scotland forever. Now they have them, they are barely using them. It’s like giving them a Ferrari that they won’t ever get out of second gear.
As far as Labour are concerned, all I get from them is resignation and defeat. Do they actually want to do well anywhere? In places like Edinburgh Northern and Leith, for example, where they currently hold the seat, they should be going after every Liberal Democrat and Tory supporter and asking for their votes to beat the SNP but nobody I know in that seat has had any such approach. They’ve already lost out this week as the first votes have already been cast as postal ballots arrive. They just don’t seem to be trying and they need to get a grip before it all slips away from them. Yes, they are under a lot of pressure but they have a good, credible leader with her heart in the right place and they need to reignite that fire in their belly and not just stumble into electoral meltdown.
And as for the Tories, where do you start? Probably with the fact that they are about as hand in glove with George Osborne and his tax rises for the rich and cuts to welfare as it’s possible to get. They have done more to destabilise the UK than the SNP and that’s saying something. We also shouldn’t forget that they have a whole load of stealth taxes in their plans, including reinstating prescription charges. The Tories kept the SNP minority government going between 2007-11, getting them out of trouble most of the time. In this Parliament, they have not won any major policy battles with three times as many MSPs as we have. Remember we have stopped the SNP in its tracks on armed police, industrial scale stop and search and forced them to expand childcare, put more money into colleges and expand feee school meals. We have been in their face the whole time.
I saw a post on Facebook this morning from a friend of mine who said that her 4 year old saw a picture of Willie Rennie and said “That man wants to make Scotland the best again.” My own very cynical teenager, who’ll be voting for the first time, looked at the news reports from the manifesto launch with delight. Our campaign is the brightest, boldest, most positive and warmest. We are really going for it. If you like what you’ve seen so far, why not help us out?
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
How Chancellor Reeves torpedoed the economy
The Disneyfication of Haley Mills
Survation now put Andy Burnham 10 points ahead in Makerfield
Michael Meadowcroft: A Liberal of Intellectual Rigour and Uncommon Integrity
Peter Martin
Chris Cory
Ruth Bright
BigTallTim
26 Comments
I do like positive thinking and optimism. This cheered me up no end. Thank you and best of luck!!
According to the Sunday Politics today, it’s all about the possibility of the Tories pushing Labour into third place. There was no mention at all of the Lib Dems or the Greens. So, who do you believe?
An honest question – the polls I’ve seen from Scotland are dire. Low single figures in both constituency and regional lists. Seems hard to marry them with this post about Willie Rennie sweeping all before him. So are the polls wrong? Are we seeing a late swing? Or is it the case of doing well in certain areas and getting wiped out elsewhere?
If this post is correct, it’s encouraging news, and fire in the belly of our campaigners on the ground. But I’m not seeing anything outside the Lib Dems saying the same.
Without any doubt whatsoever – whatever the result – Willie Rennie is a good genuine bloke who deserves a bit of luck and success. To those down south who can’t follow it, he’s playing a blinder.
Ten out of ten for Caron’s enthusiasm and Willie Rennie does seem a nice guy, but the polls are dreadful:
“Scottish poll by Panelbase, carried out for the Sunday Times. Holyrood constituency VI is SNP 51%, LAB 19%, CON 18%, LDEM 5%; regional VI is SNP 47%, CON 19%, LAB 18%, LDEM 4%, GRN 8%.”
Caron, put away the rose tinted glasses, please. I’m sure everyone is trying very hard but it’s going to take the same ten to twelve years to come back in Scotland, just as it will in England and Wales. Lets be content to advance in small steps.
I would be delighted if you are right, Caron, but if so why do the polls not reflect this – indeed why are they so utterly bad?
Tony Greaves
Its not just Caron who is mildly optimistic about our chances. Two Teams of academics (those led by Rallings & Thrasher & by Steve Fisher) are predicting small Libdem gains as the most likely result across Britain as a whole.
Looking at “Equivalent Vote” shares – the most useful way of comparing performance in Local Elections, Rallings & Thrasher are prdicting that we will get 16% in the English Locals, arise of 6% over a year. Even if we halve that rise we could still make a full recovery over a single Parliament if we kept up that rate of change. 12 years to recover would be consistent with a rise in vote share of just over 1% a year, is that Martin Lands prediction ?
Lets see how we do in 18 days before we decide which glasses to put on.
Here in St Andrews I am seeing more LibDem posters popping up in windows than last year. Very encouraging.
I am not saying we will sweep all before us but I am saying we can grow. We are doing better in the campaign than I thought was possible six months ago and it certainly feels warmer on the doorsteps than it has done since 2010.
Caron,
I don’t if you are right or wrong but I’d rather be optimistic and happy than miserable and sad.
I genuinely hope this is so. But beware the ghosts of May 7th. There were an awful lot of optimistic reports before the general election.
So why are the opinion polls so bad?
Meanwhile back in the real world….!
Being positive to the faithful is understandable but quite dishonest. I believe that the LibDems are only going to hold a few list thanks to the PR system (7th place).
The Scottish vote is in free fall and the loss of Orkney/Shetland seats a very likely scenario. We only have a few weeks to go but spin is not going to help much.
@Gordon Anders “We only have a few weeks to go but spin is not going to help much.”
But it worked well last May … oh, wait a minute …
Hopefully we will make a few gains in Scotland and the result might not be as bad as the polling would indicate, but optimism about the results being really good, like last May, is sadly misplaced and makes the task ahead even more difficult, as it shows that we are not yet facing up to reality.
The lib dems were severely punished by the Scottish electorate in 2011 for the coalition, one year after the coalition has ended we will see if the electorate are starting to forgive them or not.
I haven’t seen any signs of a revival in Scotland myself, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Saying that, those actively campaigning will often convince themselves that they’re doing better than they actually are, some people sort of have to in order to find the motivation to do it.
The local by election results in the south west of England suggest that the party is recovering down there. If Caron is right and a recovery is underway in Scotland then I would imagine that the recovery is across the entire UK as Scotland would likely by the last place to forgive a coalition with the conservatives.
We will soon see.
I would back Carons anecdotal evidence, i have spent a little time on the door steps and phone bank for Caroline Pidgeon/ Assembly elections in London, MOST definate better ‘feel’ to the responses than this time one year ago 🙂 Not saying a miracle will happen, but the first steps to re-establishing our position 🙂 We do have a distinctive place in British politics, one that is needed 🙂
@Peter Watson
“Spin” and “Spin with Votes” are very different things.
Tony Greaves: The opinion polls do not seem to reflect the recent gains in both seats and vote share particularly in the South of England. Maybe it has got even worse for the Liberal Democrats in Wales, the North and Scotland. Perhaps there is hope for the development of a strong regional base for the party instead of the vote share being thinly spread across the land with relatively few gains in seats ?
The plural of anecdote, is not data – as Paddy Ashdown used to say (in the days when he was an election winner).
Optimism is all well and good but there is little evidence of recovery in the polls nationally in Scotland. Here in Dundee I have not heard one person say they are happy to support the 1p on tax for education in the current climate, or anyone say anything good about the party or Willie Rennie. I appreciate that Dundee is one of the YES Cities but even chatting to people outwith Dundee the signs are not good. Time will tell though.
nvelope2003 – beware by-election spin. Vote 2012 has the following analysis for the March and April 2016: ” Liberal Democrat share fell to 30.4% compared to average 47.5% in May 2015 and 43.6% in 2011 with Richmondshire Independent standing for first time” {though that last point does skew things}
1 net gain – for seats contested last time their figures have as many vote share drops as increases.
Survation has us at 7% on both constituency and list. Anything we can build on that will be useful.
It’s sad but the evidence really doesn’t stack up. The opinion polls show us in a worse position in Scotland than in 2011. The views of those who left us because of coalition are continuing to harden against as we refuse to even consider that we might have messed up.
I sincerely hope that good local campaigners like Jane can do enough to hold things together in Scotland, but with the Greens well ahead of us in the polls for the regional vote, we may find ourselves lucky to come out of this election with two MSPs.
with friends like David Evans…