Ten years ago, in 2014, I joined the Liberal Democrats. Shortly after, I witnessed the political collapse of the party. It was a sobering time, and I recall a few weeks later when Tim Farron took over and revitalized the party with the message of a Liberal Democrat fightback. The directive was clear: our party must survive, and we must fight to become a competent force once again. Thus, the Liberal Democrat fightback began.
Unfortunately, these were dark years. Despite our best efforts, we lost several key battles, including Brexit, and suffered significant setbacks in 2017 and 2019. By 2019, I even began to doubt whether our party would ever return to prominence or remain on the fringes forever. However, after ten years of relentless struggle from the sidelines, we are back. Under Ed Davey’s leadership and the hard work of our party members, we have not only secured a record number of seats but also rebuilt our liberal movement. The Liberal Democrat fightback is complete. But what now?
Now is the time to celebrate, to enjoy the moment of this election, and to recognize the success of our party’s machinery, the individuals, the volunteers, the workers, and everyone who is part of the party. However, with success also comes the responsibility to identify areas for improvement. While this victory, marked by our impressive seat numbers, demonstrates that target seating works, it also reveals a concerning issue that must be addressed in the next five years.
Outside our target seats, we observed a decline in the Liberal Democrat vote where resources were stretched thin. One could argue that this was expected, with all our resources concentrated in target seats, which proved successful. However, I am concerned that Liberal Democrats outside these target seats failed to gain recognition or support, which would have better positioned us for future elections and shown greater success in our overall national numbers. In my constituency in Broxbourne, we allocated a lot of resources to help target seats, yielding great rewards. We also made efforts to secure a decent result in our area, which helped us retain our deposit and, more importantly, maintain fourth place ahead of the Greens. This was not the case nationwide. While many celebrated Liberal Democrat success in 72 seats, I noticed a worrying trend: in areas where we hadn’t allocated resources, Liberal Democrats were falling behind Reform, Greens, and even Conservatives in some northern regions.
With this success achieved, the Liberal Democrats must now use the next five years to rebuild the party outside the target seats. We must increase our presence in these areas to regain second and third places in many districts, establishing a more stable platform for the future. To this end, I propose three strategies for the Liberal Democrats and their supporters.
First, the seventy-two seats we won must repay the support given to them. This means formalising a system where each of them provide support to at least one other nearby constituency, particularly offering manpower to help rebuild the party in those areas. Outside election periods, these seats should assist in rebuilding and recruiting new members in these constituencies.
Second, the party needs a new membership strategy to rebuild local memberships outside the seventy-two seats. This involves creating guidelines and strategies for membership recruitment, particularly for small parties, to maximise member recruitment and build manpower.
Third, the Liberal Democrats must devise a new strategy to attract younger supporters through initiatives such as a new deal for students, who are traditionally a strong source of activists. Additionally, we must develop a robust online strategy to leverage social media to attract supporters. It is concerning that in this area, we lag behind Reform, Green, and Labour when we should be offering young people more opportunities for change than these parties.
This is my proposed strategy, and I hope the party considers it in the coming months. We must transition from the Liberal Democrat fight back to a new policy of the Liberal Democrat fight forward.
* Nicholas Belfitt studied politics and international relations, joined the Lib Dems in 2014 and was our Parliamentary Candidate in Broxbourne on 4 July. He blogs at Liberal Ramblings.
17 Comments
The late Lord Denis Healey used to say that the ‘Liberal Party’ existed so that Labour and the Tories could adopt their policies. So let’s see if Sir Ed and Company can get a few across the chamber in this new spirit of cooperation, starting with Social Care, the NHS and water purity. Personally I don’t particularly care whose name appears on it so long as it gets done. While I don’t swim anywhere anymore I am 80 and some days I know it! Call selfish if you want.
Interesting post, but I think you have missed one vital issue.
Tactical voting works both ways. If we were asking Labour voters to support us in seats where we could beat the Tories, then we were also expecting our voters to back Labour where they were the contender. I would certainly have voted tactically if I were in such a constituency (and have done so in the past – but not in Kingston & Surbiton!).
So that would definitely affect the figures in non-target seats, and is nothing to be ashamed of, or to try to correct. It does not mean that the local party was inactive in those seats.
Of course, building up membership and activism is always the main task of any local party and we should all be concentrating on doing that.
We lost a lot of votes to Labour in a nontarget seat to keep the Tory out. Some of these were personal supporters at the Borough Election.
You make some good points Nicholas, but I think the benefits of getting extra MPs, in particular regaining all of the perks that go along with our position as 3rd Party at Westminster was a prize worth making sacrifices for. With the benefit of hindsight you perhaps could have argued that we could have kept a higher total vote share and still become 3rd party with ‘just’ 50 MPs.
However, we’ve been pretty open about targeting winnable seats, and accepting tactical voting exists, so we should be proud that we maintained the discipline to get what we needed (MPs) not just what we wanted (vote share bragging rights). There’s a long way to go until the next general election, and our tactics will depend on a number of things, but I agree that we need to think about how to use our successes to widen the support base, as well as consolidating it. Local elections will be key IMO.
But now we have more MPs we should be getting much more media coverage, and we need to make that happen.
@Mary Reid
That’s only true of seats where the Tories were contenders, our vote share fell back in many labour held seats as well including all’s those where we were supposed to be labour’s main opponents, most of which saw the greens steal second place from us.
An interesting article, but it overlooks the fact that – beyond the 72 seats actually won – the number of potential target seats for the 2029 elections are pathetically small. There were only 25 seats where LibDems were in second place, and in only 13 of those close than 10% behind the winner. Scotland is the glaring example – six excellent wins, but 51 other seats where there were no second places, and LibDems mostly came 4th or 5th. Where are SLD expecting to go next?
I do wonder if deprivation is an issue. It seems that we have done well in the more prosperous areas. In my constituency, we felt we were up against reform when trying to win ‘working class’ votes. We can do more to address the problem of poverty in order to gain more support and also it is the moral thing to do. Our manifesto addressed the cost of living crisis but we also need to get into those hard to reach wards. Any tips?
I agree with so much of what you have written Nicholas. I am from an area that could have a LD MP, but where we are now in 4th place behind Labour, Conservatives and Reform. There are many challenges ahead as we try to transition towards becoming a true national party with hopes of forming the Government. We must aim to be seen as the alternative to Labour everywhere (at least in England) and the real opposition in Westminster (however difficult we find that). To end on a note of controversy, our excellent policy on immigration lacked only one thing – an acceptance of the principle of a deterrent to illegal immigration. This is entirely consistent with our objective of increasing the number of safe legal routes.
The tenor of what Nicholas says is bang on. Without a coherent strategy, fully funded and put fully into effect the Greens will advance.
We cannot rely on the 72 seats we now hold once the Tories get their act together in say 2 – 3 years time, they will be coming after us with anger and gusto.
Having said that there is a real opportunity if we are ready to take on Labour once their gloss wears off, .in those very, very week Liberal democrat areas, and there are hundreds of such seats involved,
Following the SNP’s collapse to 9 seats the Liberal Democrats would only have had to hold the 11 seats won in 2019 to become the third Party in 2024. The Party now needs to aim high. The next objective has to be to replace the Tories as the Opposition.
Thanks for the article Nicholas, this is a crucial issue and we have been here before. There are many many areas where we are now an irrelevance. It is the downside of the necessity of ruthless targeting. One way back is by building our local government base more widely, but I have a more radical approach to put forward. As David Le Grice points out in the Labour strongholds where we used to be second, we have been overtaken by the Greens. The time is surely overdue for the Greens and Liberal Democrats to merge. Our manifestos were very similar, the differences being mostly questions of degree and arguably realism as the Greens could afford to be far more radical and less costed. But the philosophy of the two parties are closer now that I can recall, with a common focus on the environment, health and inequality. Under FPTP there is much to be gained by not fighting each other over minor differences, or over local rivalry.
I’m fairly sure a lot of people vote “Green” because of their name, and their lack of baggage. That includes a lot of people who used to vote Conservative who just like hedgerows and being anti-development.
Far better to push for STV so that distinct Green and LibDem voices can be heard and represented without having to go Highlander “there can be only one” on each other.
A lot of good suggestions here, our 72 MPs were elected by 12% of Voters, half the share we got in 2010 – we need to recruit more Members & Voters & extend from those Orange Islands into new areas.
I think there is a good chance that our Opinion Poll ratings may rise once Polling restarts. A lot of Voters who have previously seen us as a “Wasted Vote” will have been surprised to see us do so well.
On 6 May 2019 the Guradian declared on its Front Page “Universal basic income doesn’t work. Let’s boost the public realm instead.” That was then, and I think we may be able to guess whose idea it was then. And naturally his or her far sight may have stopped before the end of this 2024.
Lib Dems have been looking at 2029 for a year or two, and wondering “Will it be PR by then — and if so, what? So now, surely, it is not for us “too soon” to worry about 2029: things may be very different by then, and we must be part ot the change
The annual Budget will not be a Chancellor’s proud revelation, but the sum and conclusion of the debating or wrangling of perhaps ten ‘Parties’. And their first co-laborated announcement will have to be a fundamental declaration of the coming year’s NATIONAL
INCOME DIVIDEND (AKA “UBI”). For a twelvemonth every adult will be paid it, by the Income Tax Authority (ITA); and every month every adult will pay Income Tax on it as part of his or her total current taxable Income.
Every recipient of the UBI [ everyone, that is ] will pay at least 10% of his or her taxable Income as Income Tax.
I have a hypothesis about how general elections work for us, or can work for us if we are to grow further than 72.
It is that in general elections we must alternate between increasing vote share and seat share, but seldom both at once. In 2019 we increased vote share but not seats. This gave us lots of good second places to convert into wins this election, but we naturally went down where we did not target so overall vote share remained about the same. If in 2029 we can increase vote share, get lots of good second places in Labour seats(because we have kind of exhausted Tory seats to win and taking anti-Tory tacticals is not a sustainable long-term strategy) then that will lay a platform for 2034. The pattern repeats.
A lot will have to be seen in the next direction the Tory party takes, and what Labour does in government, and how we can best oppose them.
What about 3rd placed seats how many of those are there? 25 seats to target next time doesn’t even break 3 figures so to pass the Tories and become the official opposition requires even more seats to be worked on.
I agree though it will be a challenging task without reform of our democratic systems. The most important is electoral reform to a form of PR. Despite our vote efficiency success to grow further we need to put resources into changing our voting system to one that is more inclusive, provides more voter choice and eliminates the need for tactical voting.