It would be very churlish not to congratulate Hannah Spencer and the Greens this morning. It’s a good feeling to win a by-election. Having another young, progressive woman in Parliament is so much better a result than it could have been.
The Greens did pretty much our playbook and took a seat that, in other times, we would have grabbed and we have to ask ourselves whether the strategy that allowed that to happen is one that we wish to continue.
The result was:
Green Party – 14,980 40.7%. +28%
Reform UK – 10,578 28.7% +15%
Labour Party – 9,364 25.4% -25%
Conservative Party – 706 1.9%. -6%
Liberal Democrats – 653 1.8% -2%
Monster Raving Loony Party – 159
Advance UK – 154
Rejoin EU Party – 98
Libertarian Party – 47
Social Democratic Party – 46
Communist League – 29
The total number of votes cast was 36,814, with a voter turnout of 47.62%.
First up, this is a total and utter failure by Reform. This is the third by-election they were supposed to walk but lost after Hamilton and Caerphilly. They threw the entire contents of the luxury kitchen at it. And of course they are doing the Trump thing by complaining it was “sectarian” and stolen from them by illegal “family voting.” Their blatant racism is unsurprising.
Second, this is awful for Labour, though entirely expected and entirely their own fault. The recriminations had started before the ballot boxes had even arrived at the count. They will have to decide whether they want to have months or years of fractious, factional infighting or whether they just pick a strategy they can agree on and stick to it. Even if they change their leader, finding one who can unite the Reform Lite and left factions is going to be a challenge.
Third, where were the Tories? Less than 2% and a lost deposit. Embarrassing.
Fourth, this is the sort of by-election we could have won once, back in the nineties/noughties. But this is what happens when you insist on a “party of Middle England” narrative and put your entire effort into being as inoffensive to soft Tories as possible. We need to come out of the corner into which we have backed ourselves to be a proper national party again.
We could take a leaf out of the Scottish Party’s book and actually adopt a slogan that is values based. “Change with fairness at its heart” sounds a lot more us than the timidity we have seen south of the border.
This result is not what our brilliant candidate Jackie Pearcey deserved.
The party will be deciding on its strategy at Autumn Conference and there will be various opportunities for members to make their views known. We have a chance to do something different and we should take it.
* 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
Lib Dems successful in tricky by-election defence
Pope Leo speaks for all liberals when he condemns racism, supports migration, and supports Ukraine
Growing Asylum backlog undermines Government's case
Brechtian television: Leo McKern in Galileo (1964)
Conference booked
Nick Baird
Peter Chambers
Tristan Ward
cim
Jenny Barnes
71 Comments
Agree with most of this but, charitably, you don’t have the luxury of waiting until the autumn before shifting your campaign strategy.
James, I guess it’s a question of do we do it voluntarily or will Conference force the issue
I agree with James Graham’s comment. Politics is shifting fast, and the party needs to move away with its obsession with slow moving process.
“First up, this is a total and utter failure by Reform”….
The seat was one of Labours safest – its well over 400 on Reforms target list. All three by-elections mentioned produced a significant increase in vote share. There will be hundreds seats across the Midlands North West/East where the demographics will be far kinder.
To say that they should of walked it and the others is an exaggeration to say the least.
The party needs to concentrate on why it’s delivered a 1.8% vote share.
So, the Middle England bungee didn’t stretch as far as to a visit to Manchester. Time for a change.
Of course it’s hard being centrist, so why are we LibDems afraid of the term “centre left”? It’s where we should be. Don’t we have more in common with the Greens than anyone else? We have, however, or should have, our own distinctive character. Realism with compassion?
The Greens seem to have brilliant communications skills. Hannah Spencer’s victory speech was superb.
Thank you Caron for an excellent response to the by-election result; we really do need to review our strategy. We also need to find a better way of proclaiming in current circumstances (not just basic principles) what we stand for.
As to Joan’s point, here in North Staffordshire there has always been a strong undercurrent of anti immigration feeling but also anti-Muslim. This is among people who talk about the decline in Christian heritage in spite of the same people having nothing to do with the local churches. Reform UK had a massive vote in County elections last May and among the other issues causing this support is taxation and the cost of living.
@Caron”But this is what happens when you insist on a “party of Middle England” narrative and put your entire effort into being as inoffensive to soft Tories as possible.”
Quite right and the courage of the Greens in not being afraid to make an issue of Palestine in their campaign (saying the same things about genocide that we are saying in Parliament, but not loudly enough in the country) is a lesson for us.
Many if not most of the local elections in England anyway this year are in urban areas with a large Muslim vote and a large “educated” Labour vote that despairs of our Government’s complicity in genocide. Candidates fighting Labour would find it worthwhile to mention Palestine in their literature and talk about it on the doorstep with staunch Labour supporters. I’ve seen it work.
This is a very dramatic vote against the status quo. I gather there are anecdotal reports of voters swapping between Reform and Green, which suggests to me an element of just wanting someone different, rather than particularly caring about the policies of either party. I feel sad that this means on Caron’s figures, 69.4% have voted for what I would view as extremist parties who come across as wanting burn the whole system down, and who offer simplistic populist, economically totally illiterate, policies.
The relatively high turnout for a by-election does suggest that voters haven’t lost faith with politics per se – they’ve lost faith with parties seen as the ‘establishment’ – in other words, Labour and the Tories.
But we are obviously not cutting through, and that needs a lot of work to find a message that will cut through while remaining liberal and realistic.
“First up, this is a total and utter failure by Reform”
I’m not advocating for Reform but I am saying we shouldn’t underestimate their continued threat. Reform more than doubled both their vote share and number of total votes – compared to the July 2024 election.
You probably wouldn’t be saying this if the Lib Dems had managed to do the same.
Congratulations to Hannah Spencer on her spectacular win in the by-election while being a plumber, heating engineer, councillor and a plasterer and now adding an MP to that list. No doubt the knives will now be out for her as Labour, Conservatives and Reform try to undermine her success. This by election campaign by the Greens, with people travelling from all over the country to help, reminded me of the many amazing Liberal and Liberal Democrat community based campaigns I helped in over 40 years. Hopefully this result is another step towards the end of the two party dominance of our politics in the UK, and hopefully an end to the first past the post voting system.
“Someone”. wrote this three weeks ago…Saturday 7th Feb..
Why Vince is wrong about Gorton…
” However much I love Vince Cable, I can’t let his comments urging people to vote tactically for Labour in the forthcoming Gorton and Denton by-election pass without comment.”..
Thank goodness the electorate agreed with you!
Caron is right that the Greens ran our playbook. The question is what we put in the playbook going forward. We need policies that speak directly to working families, vocational workers, and young people locked out of prosperity — intergenerational fairness, housing, tax simplification. The substance exists. What’s missing is the energy and confidence to lead with it. James is right that we can’t wait until Autumn.
I so much agree with Caron. Do we really want to replace the Tories as the natural party of the southern middle class ? I was once a Camden Councillor before the party became the majority party there. At the same time we had a similar position in Sheffiled, Liverpool, Newcastle, Brent and Edinburgh and were the opposition in Manchester. I know wht it’s happened but still a bit sad….
Thank you Caron – spot on
‘… this is what happens when you insist on a “party of Middle England” narrative and put your entire effort into being as inoffensive to soft Tories as possible. We need to come out of the corner into which we have backed ourselves to be a proper national party again.’
LibDems look to the wider public like just another ‘establishment’ party. Coalition still hanging over us. Though to the Tory-Lite voter we seem determined to focus on, thats probably an attraction.
And its about both the message and the medium.
“69.4% have voted for what I would view as extremist parties who come across as wanting burn the whole system down, and who offer simplistic populist, economically totally illiterate, policies.”
Exactly right.
“We really do need to review our strategy.”
In other news we held a council seat on Southampton yesterday and are generally holding and gaining most weeks. This week 4 councillors defected to us. I predict we will make gains in councils across the country in May and in the Scottish Parliament as well.
The question really being posed is – do the Liberal Democrats want to be a party of government, or a party of protest/opposition? A county that has only parties of protest in parliament is in deep trouble. Look at France – unable to pass a budget for nearly two years.
Socialism doesn’t work. Why should we believe it will work better when practiced by the Green Party than by Labour?
On Reform, the basic story is that they went up & then down –
at their peak in early October Reform were polling in a range of 29% to 36%
currently they are in the range of 24% to 30%, down by 5% or 6%.
They are still a lot higher than they were around The General Election & a bit ahead of where they were last May.
This should be a real wake-up call to the party. We arrogantly delude ourselves of our supposed strength through the number of MPs, whereas the truth is that this came about not because people voted FOR us, but against other parties. This is one reason I don’t believe we’ll react – the party is too stuck in the past, its hierarchy, institutions and systems resist change. I’d been inactive for a while but accepted an invitation to a local party event when our glorious leader visited. A brilliantly articulate and energetic young woman who had a high-powered job in housing tried to explain to him in a very reasoned and reasonable way that the progressive youth vote had largely deserted the LDs for other parties, and reasoned why this might be. She had no individual agenda or party association but he was having none of it. She was right, he was wrong and and the evidence is in last night’s vote.
I want to express my appreciation of Jackie Pearcey for standing. Over twenty years ago I lived in Manchester, and know she is a stalwart of the party there. In those days we used to appeal to many of the sort of voters who now prefer the Greens.
I think the Lib Dems have to face the fact that the coalition they have put together – of disparate, usually middle-class elements, combining the causes of economic centrism against the extremes of right and left, of localism and regionalism against centralising bureaucracy, of democratic consensualism against the politics of clashing power blocs, of reason and evidenced, careful proceduralism against leap in the drak faddism – is breaking up, just as those of Labour and Tories are.
Unless the system is changed – and the penny may be finally, desperately dropping for Labour – there is a real risk of a new two-party system asserting itself, split between Reform and Green, that leaves the rump of the Lib Dems forced to consider whether it wants to merge with the centrist rump of Labour (and whether either party can survive the shock of such a transition), as the more radical elements of both parties are eternally tempted or persuaded to head off to join the Greens.
I’m not sure any of us necessarily want to live in that world, but its a thought experiment you may need to seriously consider.
This should be seen as a failure by all three of the “old” parties alike. Labour, Tories and Lib Dems combined got less than 30% of the votes. Don’t try to think about specific Lib Dem failings. Try to think about failings which the Lib Dems share with the Tories and Labour.
Watch “Dirty Business”, especially the finale, showing Cameron and Starmer boasting in identical tones about how they would create a bonfire of controls and regulations, alongside the resulting bonfire at Grenfell Tower. Then remember, as voters do, what happened in 2010-2015 when the Lib Dems got a chance to join another government controlled by rich donors and commercial lobbyists. Jumped right in. So, not a real alternative to government-as-usual.
We are being phased out of British politics in favour of more populist voices.
Personally, I put it down to a few issues, one being poor media coverage on our end. It would be incredibly easy to say “the BBC should have platformed us more”, but there are things we can do, as a party, to make ourselves heard.
Podcasts, increased social media activity, and more opinion pieces from MPs; we have to create the space we need to be heard.
Another major issue is identity. We are a party of many liberal and liberal-adjacent ideologies. But there are a few key themes that unite us all: good-quality public services, strong markets, decentralising power, internationalism, upholding the rule of law, and recognising human rights.
So why aren’t we hammering those points? We are allowing ourselves to be defined by others as “not Labour, Tory or Reform”.
The Greens set out a clear agenda in the run-up to yesterday’s by-election: Reform is offering hate, we are offering hope, and here’s how. I may not be the biggest fan of the Green Party, but it was effective and, most importantly, proactive in shaping the discussion. We need to start doing the same.
The Liberal Democrats need to come out swinging hard, saying something like this
1. We are THE party, the only party, of true individual freedom, human rights and communities and institutions of choice, not top down central diktat
2. We have got more practical, sustainable, tangible green policy into local and national government than any other party in Britain, and will keep doing so wherever we are elected
3. We will fix your church roof, get your river cleaned, defend your trans kids, fund a proper system to support your mental health, improve your bus routes, comprehensively reform your social care, protect your privacy from a snooping state and connect your business back up with European markets.
4. Economic liberalism doesn’t work if plutocrats and hypercapitalists own everything. We will tax extreme wealth properly, and fund services and resources to help everyone pursue the life they want without having to bow and scrape to the super rich and corporate conformity (sorry Orange bookers, it needs to happen)
Ed Davey, are you listening? We need to be about something. Now.
Some of us have been arguing for some time we need to refresh the party get some serious policy and not depend upon a leader clowning around in leisure parks. With this result in Gorton and Denton have you got the message yet .
“We will fix your church roof, get your river cleaned, defend your trans kids, fund a proper system to support your mental health, improve your bus routes” and “fund services and resources to help everyone pursue the life they want”
Are we quite sure “taxing extreme wealth properly” will raise sufficient funds to do all the above AND get the net zero transition and rebuild our defences to as to do our bit to see off Putin?
“We will tax extreme wealth properly, and fund services and resources to help everyone pursue the life they want without having to bow and scrape to the super rich and corporate conformity (sorry Orange bookers, it needs to happen)”
This incorrectly characterises the Orange Bookers.
For example, yesterday someone here castigated Nick Clegg for proposing to cut taxes by £18 billion a year, asserting that the tax cuts were to be funded by cutting services.
I dug around a bit – the party was saying that the tax cuts were aimed at those on low and middle incomes (basic rate of tax down to 16%), and were to be paid for by green taxes, equalising capital gains tax with income tax rates, withdrawal of pension relief from top rates of tax and that old chestnut – government efficiency/closing tax loopholes.
I also found there was quite a lot of enthusiasm on this site at the time including from the person who did the castigating yesterday. To be fair there was caution too.
The Corbynites are back, dressed in new green clothes, mouthing the same old platitudes about kindness while spreading bile and division. It is disappointing that some on this thread draw the lesson of the Gordon and Denton by election that Lib Dems should seek to emulate their approach.
Raising the temperature further against Israel (in a City where Jews were murdered less than six months ago) by campaigning that Labour must be punished for Gaza, and dog whistling anti Hindu sentiments by depicting Narendra Modi shaking hands with Starmer in your leaflets in Urdu, might pick up a bit of support from some haters, but it is certainly not very liberal.
Labour are learning the hard way that there is no future in trying to out Reform the Reform Party. There is no future for this Party in pathetically trying to out Green the Green Party, because in the downhill race to show you are the most anti Zionist, you will not only end up in some very dark places, but Polanski will always go further.
There are a number of good comments here. We need to stop being the ivory tower, middle England ‘safe’ Party and read our own manifesto. Yes, we may lose a few ‘comforable’ voters, but we could gain many more by really standing up and being counted on international law, human rights and social justice. We need the electorate to be able to take us seriously, not just as a placebo.
Both Reform and Greens are extreme. I have no wish to emulate Reform in any way, but we could go a long way towards many of the Green policies without losing our credibility. It is not as if many of the policies do not exist already in our Party. We just need to promote them much more strongly and be prepared to defend them rigorously. That includes our existing policies in regard to Palestine. It is a small step to actually promoting what we already have.
I hope that finally the penny has dropped.
The Greens are an enemy to be attacked at every turn, their economic, social and international views are not ours.
It is time to play hardball.
Devils advocate without any particular skin in the game:
Should the LIb Dems actually continue with their middle England strategy that yields actual electoral dividends and accept that with that comes acceptance that you can’t then win everywhere.
It was probably only ever going to end with problems when you had MPs from Burnley to Richmond on Thames in terms of a long term policy coherence.
Be a moderate centrist party that wins the votes of predominantly centrist tories and tactical squeeze of centrist Labour leaning voters and own it and build from there.
Is that a party I would vote for? Well probably not – at least not automatically or with enthusiasm (so probably in practice to block a worse option) but there is definitely a space for that and that space is not yet completely filled.
(Just to be clear this is not a position I would have advocated as a party member so I get Caron’s point totally!)
Miranda says,
“Both Reform and Greens are extreme.”
That is also my take on yesterdays by-election. What I say next might astound you. Voters are far more angry and incandescent than you realise, and middle-ground centrism just wont cut it. Astonishingly, in the coming months, Farage will be seen as “establishment”, “a sell out”, and not extreme enough. Something similar will occur on the Left of politics with a sectarian derivative of Islam.
The next GE will be between a Hostile Extreme Ultra Right, and a Hostile Extreme Ultra Left. That next GE will be the most destructive, caustic, bitter, angry, campaign the UK will have ever witnessed. It will dwarf the blistering rancor of the Brexit – Remain vote.
If you think I am wrong, watch closely as the Reform UK membership abandon Farage in the months ahead, in favour of Rupert Lowe.
Please, Do your own research and don’t shoot the messenger.
I don’t agree with Caron’s analysis.
We were never going to get anywhere in Gorton and Denton in this by election, so there is no point in regretting that we didn’t. A national Lib Dem strategy of appealing to “Middle England” (which is where the majority of the electorate is) is the right strategy and we should continue to stick with it.
Here’s Mark Pack’s takeaway from this week’s by-election results. “Keep calm and carry on”
https://www.markpack.org.uk/176258/lessons-from-this-weeks-by-elections/
When the SDP got less votes than the Official Monster Raving Looney, David Owen chucked it in. Today Badenoch with the worst Conservative by-election performance ever stokes up racist memes. Kudos for Caron for at least admitting the result isn’t good and that once the party would have at least been in contention.
The Green Party could well gain momentum, more members, a Labour MP or two defecting, more local councillors, MSP, Welsh Assembly Members, more money, picking up a couple of % points from Labour, a couple of % points from reform a couple from the Lib Dems and sitting at 25% in the polls, the media loving a Reform vs Green contest. Come the next election there may be a tipping point where the Lib Dem vote collapses even where once enough to win.
“Watch “Dirty Business”, especially the finale, showing Cameron and Starmer boasting in identical tones about how they would create a bonfire of controls and regulations, alongside the resulting bonfire at Grenfell Tower.”
Essential viewing in my view – just been rewatching the final episode on Channel 4.
See https://www.windrushwasp.org/dirty-business
Jackie Pearcey would have been far and away the best constituency MP. People nowadays seem to vote on headlines. Guess that’s why we left the EU.
From what I gather the Greens used tactics I would not want to see the Lib Dems deploy, as a party of values not identities. There are issues with the party’s direction but the current electoral dynamics and the fact the shadow of coalition still looms means that being the party of middle England is necessary, whilst trying to win over more left of centre voters at the same time.
Caron’s finest hour.
“You don’t have the luxury of waiting until the autumn before shifting your campaign strategy.”
I’d say more-or-less the opposite. You don’t have the luxury of assuming that a quick make-over will achieve anything. All three of the old parties have completely lost the trust of the electorate, for good reasons. You can’t win back trust with a few slogans, or even with a few good policy papers.
Before Coalition, the Lib Dems typically achieved around 20% in the polls. Since Coalition, 10% or thereabouts has been commoner. Half the voters left and never came back. Lib Dems keep kidding themselves that the voters have forgotten Coalition. They haven’t. Sure, the details have been forgotten. But the spectacle of a party selling out its principles for the sake of power has not.
Five years ago, the Lib Dems chose a nice, competent leader tainted by Coalition, and rejected a potential “new broom” without that handicap. Self-deception told the Lib Dems that the memory of Coalition didn’t matter. It did, and it does.
It seems that the MPs(I’d include Ed in this fwiw) members and donors all agree that the party needs to get serious about media breakthrough and defining who we are. HQ and the people setting strategy and tactics do not seem to agree. That tension can’t hold forever. I’d assume they read comments here, but they should be voiced directly to MPs and HQ as well. This election was an embarrassment for us and emails can explain it away however they want but the reality is we were in last place and have no plans to change that. There has to be change or the party will hand the country over to Reform in a few years time. Aping Labour and being worse than reform on issues like the social media ban(a clear astroturf campaign with god knows who funding it and whipping up concern with the mumsnet crowd) is not acceptable. We have values that appeal to the majority of Brits but we’ve let the self appointed strategists tell us that we must by no means speak of our values lest we scare off one single soft tory mum in Woking. It’s not working and we need change.
Let’s get real. We were never in the narrative for this by election. We correctly didn’t throw the kitchen sink at it. It would have been a complete waste of money and resources to do so. I assume we targeted a Ward (Jackie’s old one)? If so, that was the correct thing to do.
Thank you Jack!
Reform & their allies are The Enemy.
The Greens are our Rivals & we should treat them with respect, they are Naive certainly but we should disassociate ourselves from Labours ridiculous attacks on them.
I’m an old fashioned one-nation Conservative, now politically homeless. I look back on the coalition government and think it was one of the best in my lifetime – the Conservatives provided the brains and the Lib Dems the heart. It’s hard to understand why so many Lib Dems see it as an aberration and betrayal. Now Conservatives have gone, chasing Reform. Labour is economically incompetent as always. Where’s a centre party I could support? I thought it might be the Lib Dems, but from these posts you want to go to the left of the Greens. There’s a hole in the centre of British politics and no-one to fill it. I despair.
I agree with Simon and Tristan. If voters think that the answer to a failing Labour government is the greens or reform then we are in a very bad place indeed.
My personal opinion is the Gorton and Denton by election win by the Green Party was merely a protest vote. The Green Party are unelectable to form a government.
Those commenting that the we couldn’t have won this are completely missing the point. The fact that we weren’t in the position that the Greens were in is the entire problem!
The Green parties vote notional vote share from 2019 (a few months before Ed Davey became our leader) was 2.5%, less than half what we got!
Yet in 2024 they came third with 13.2%.
They did this I understand without any local campaigning (as seems to have been the case in many of the seats where they came second), it happened because despite very limited coverage it was apparent that they were the party to vote for for people either upset about Gaza or who wanted progressive policies.
We absolutely could have filled this role, labour were offering us back our post Iraq coalition on a silver platter and we never so much as glanced at it. So the Greens grabbed it and ran off with it instead!
They even overtook us in most of the seats where we were 2nd to labour in 2019, including in seats we used to hold.
And Gorton was very much a strong area for us historically, some wards we had held for decades, including the first ward we ever won in Manchester, and the coalition didn’t completely kill that off, our internal polling showed we could have won the 2017 by election before it was cancelled!
There are also strong parallels between what the greens achieved here and what we did in the Brent East by-election, and it happened for the same reasons, voters upset at Labour’s middle east policy and feeling let down by Blair’s government.
And won that seat from a distant 3rd place with no local councillors in the seat.
Agree with Lionel. If libdems tack one more inch left they won’t get my vote. I suspect we are witnessing the end of fptp. It’s becoming too difficult for parties to maintain their internal coalitions.
In most other professions, your usually proud of previous co-workers who leave the organisation and go on to make something of their careers and indeed reach positions of leadership…I dont see anything different from the divisive tactics deployed by the Greens in Gorton and Denton, from what the Lib Dems did in the Bermondsey by-election in 1983 or in Cheltenham in 1992. It seems to me that the Party will return to its long held ‘equidistance’ strategy, by replacing the two establishment parties with two insurgent ones..
I have been a party member for 62 years. In that time I have seen a rather large number of ‘spectacular’ by-election results, won by a range of different political parties, the majority of which have returned to the original seat holder usually at the next general election or at a subsequent one. 2024 was a notable exception to that.
After each such by-election the so-called pundits talked sagely about how this meant the end of politics as we know it. It seems quite likely to me that Labour will regain this seat at the next GE, because that has generally been the pattern. Apart from the last parliament, how many seats do we hold that we originally won in a by-election? Not many.
I think that we should take a lot of notice about what the new Green MP had to say, especially “People are fed up with working hard to make other people rich”. For many people work does not provide a decent life. What do we have to offer that will swiftly change that? Why are we so timid about taxing excessive income and wealth? Nothing justifies paying people millions of pounds in salary and there is absolutely no need to accept the wealth concentrations that have been amassed since the Thatcher revolution in 1979. Both are bad for equality and bad for living standards and we shouldn’t accept them.
When I was a young councillor we extolled the virtue of quick, visible and cheap. Time for more of that in our offer
Firstly, let me join in the congratulations to Hannah Spencer, and in commiserations to Jackie Pearcey, who certainly deserved better than 1.8% but at least gave Liberals in the constituency someone to vote for where they couldn’t bring themselves to back Hannah.
Secondly, let us please persuade the media to ditch their present outmoded system of a list of “safe seats”. The media hap on about Gordon and Denton being in Labour’s list of their top 40 “safest seats”. It was never a safe seat for Labour, and I pointed out to Mark Pack long before the campaign began that the Greens were odds-on favourites to win based on their level of current support at the start of this year (let alone what the next set of post-by-election polls may show them at!). The bookies had got it right! The current system of listing “safe seats” is based on the old two-party system which arose when we has a two-party political system operating. We now have a multi-party political system operating in Britain (similar to what has worked in most of Europe for decades) where there are five major parties with serious prospects of winning a large tranche of seats in the Commons (six such parties in Scotland and Wales), even if we discount Corbyn’s Your Party which has failed due to internal factionalism before it really started.
You could argue that the Lib Dems should double down on their middle England strategy as it’s the only game in town. A group of Conservatives launched a campaign to appeal to disillusioned centrist voters, why aren’t the Lib Dems doing that? In the last GE the Tories got 16% of remain voters, why not target those voters going forwards?
Just a further thought. By-election gains no longer held by the Lib Dems. Torrington, Orpington, Birmingham Ladywood, Liverpool Edge Hill, Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles, Berwick-Upon-Tweed, Leicester East, Brent East, Southwark, Littleborough and Saddleworth, Rochdale, Dunfermline and West Fife, Glasgow Hillhead, Ripon, Crosby and several others. At least 8 of these lost at the subsequent GE. We do now hold Ely after a long gap but it’s not the same seat as that won by Clay Freud in 1973. Sutton has come ands gone as has Eastleigh.
The point is that by-election success is absolutely no guarantee of further success and is often followed by loss at the next GE.
Caron is right to congratulate the new Green MP, but many are quite wrong in suggesting what this actually means. I recommend reading Mike Dixon’s explainer email before commenting further.
We need to adjust our thinking and our calculations about the arithmatics around “safe seats” to the new reality, which should be based around the levels of support in each individual constituency, applying levels of national “swing” to the most recent6 election results in that constituency. I did this early in January and it revealed that if a hypothetical general election took place this Spring, the Greens would gain between 30 and 40 seats (all from Labour), while Labour would suffer catastrophic losses to Reform on the right as well as to the Greens on the left. LibDems would hold virtually all their present seats and any losses would be balanced by taking a few further seats from the Tories. Of course such an election will not happen before 2029 (turkeys don’t vote for Christmas!), but it shows what could transpire if current levels of electoral support are maintained. The point is also that Gorton and Denton was always among that list of putative Green gains, which were exclusively concentrated in present Labour-held seats in inner urban areas, chiefly East London, Bristol and Greater Manchester.
Absolutely, Caron. I was working in Bermondsey when Simon Hughes won a by-election in an area that seemed just as improbable then as Gorton was for the Greens this time. There were differences, of course, but they didn’t all work in the same direction: the Real Labour campaign in Bermondsey was more in competition with us than Reform were with progressive parties in Gorton. Now the Greens have a huge boost for the local elections, which could cost us dear. When I think about how pathetic the Starmer government is, I focus not on numerous blunders, but on the complete absence of vision or courage or strategy (other than “delivery, delivery, delivery” which makes them sound like Royal Mail). But just how different, right now, are we? No mansion tax, please, it’ll frighten the gnomes.
@ Big Tall Tim. “Let’s get real”.
Indeed, if the Lib Dems are to be a mere optional choice on an occasional basis in the prosperous leafy home counties, they will never ever be a party of government representing the whole of the UK.
It’s worth remembering that Jackie was our candidate in 2017 in the Gorton by-election that never was, which we were increasingly thinking we might win prior to it being overrun by the snap GE that year.
I agree strongly with Caron, Dominic, Mark and Jack. If we want to be a serious national party as our leadership claims to want, we can’t afford to write off entire segments of the electorate – particularly not the segment most consistently identified as voting for us!
I have been unhappy with our messaging since our time in Coalition. The Tories knew of our pledge on tuition fees, but they used it as an opportunity to keep us in control. All our MPs should have at least abstained, or voted against the rise in fees to £9,000 from the Labour Party’s original £3,000 despite their promises (since abandoned) to remove them. The government should at least up the thresholds and reduce the interest rates.
Voters are concerned about what actions will benefit them, socially or economically. We have to avoid coming up with ‘policies’ that we can’t put into practice because we are very unlikely to become the major party in government. The only thing we can promote are the values that a good, just and fair society should live by for everyone’s benefit.
Poverty and inequality are the main blights on our society, and for all their posturing, extreme left-wing and right-wing parties have not put forward any answers. We need to demonstrate compassion, an emotion sadly missing from those promoting division and hate. Voters are reminded of the problems, but are not offered viable solutions, so are forced to choose the least-worst option, which in Gorton & Denton were the Greens.
I hope everyone has read Mike Dixon’s excellent email yesterday ? I am not going to try & sum up his lengthy argument but I would stress his point that Tactical Voting will be central in 2029.
The Greens campaign in G&D was a great example of how to do it but so was our success in 2024.
Well said Lionel. BTW Lionel. This site is a place to chat, NOT official HQ. It’s where the whole spectrum of Liberal Democrat members and supporters can let off steam and discuss ideas. Thankfully, it doesn’t decide policies or strategies.
As I say above, we were never in the narrative for this by-election. Therefore, to do anything for it would have been absolutely stupid. Also, to say we should change our national campaign strategy based on this result, is also absolutely stupid. Yes, I think we need to be more exciting on social media. Sometimes, we’re absolutely brilliant and spot on, but too many times we’re boring. However, our general national positioning is correct.
Further to my comment about Labour attacks on The Greens we now see Starmer using exactly the same attack line as Reform. At their back of this is a common Labour assumption that they “Own” Minority groups. How dare Minority Voters think for themselves & Vote for anyone but Labour – don’t they know their place ?
The hard reality is that where Lib Dems are campainging hard locally (and in a lot places running the Council) we are popular)because we work for people, get things done and report back. And we do well when we’re seem as the alternative to a smug out of touch worse option thht has been around too long (Tories in Southern England, SNP to an extent in Scotland). There may be more we can squeeze out the second group, especially as if Reform and Tories both stand in 2029 then we could come through middle with FPTP (eg. Deizes and Fareham)
But the problem is in the areas that are none of the above we are largely invisible, especilly if we have no Councillors and a moribund local party. I remember in 2010 when the local and general elections combined, the parliamentary candidate was impressed that we wer getting votes of 20-25% in hopeless seats where we ran a paper candidate He seemed to think these should be targets net time. I told him that these votes were’froth’ it just meant they polled the Constituency average in a GE year, bit that there was no basis to divert scarce reources from real target wards in the next round of local elections.
I joined the Youug Liberals in 1974 after being impressed by the wins in Parliamentary by-eelctions like Sutton & Cheam, Ripon etc in the two yeard prior to that.
Back then I’m sure the party would have welcomed a candidate like Hannah Spencer with open arms. These days I doubt she’d pass the ‘HR Dept’s’ selection procedure, certainlky not for a by-election.
Jackie Pearcy was unlucky that the by-election to fill the vacancy when Gerald Kaufman ddidn’t happen because Theresa May called a snap General Election. I think the whole party should thank for agreeing to stand, even though it was clear this by-election was going to be a 3 horse race. Despite that she wasn’t far offbeathing the Tory. If the party had thrown the Kitchen sink at G&D,I still doubt Jackie woud have got more that 2000 votes max, and the nature of FPTP is that Reform would have won.
@ Lionel Stock
HI Lionel
You’re right about the coalition of course though I d add that the Lib Dems provided ideas, brains as well as heart. It’s also fair to say that there’s a lot more opinion in the Lib Dems than represented on this blog – broad church and all that.
Some contributors do rather take pride in bashing the leadership for not being completely perfect and delivering majority government in precisely the way they approve. As to the Greens – Theakes above is quite right, and I hope you have seen my posts too. There is a hole in the centre of politics a mile wide and I think our leadership gets it even if the armchair warriors dont.
I’ve been canvassing today in North West Kent in a very Reformy area where we have a council by election. We have not stood here for a long time but I think we have a easonable chance of winning (Tories Greens and Labour well behind. We’re talking about housing bin collection etc and stopping Reform and voters seem to be interested in what we are saying.
G&D by election makes it clear there is a gap in the middle. It doesn’t seem very fashionable at the moment but I reckon by time of the next election that might seem quite attractive. That’s where the libdems should go.
@thwaites – The Greens are the enemy, as opposed to a rival? We should play hardball – presumably by emulating the lies (“Only Labour can beat Reform!”) and smears (“The Greens would legalise date-rape drugs!”) of the Labour Party? Really?
The “War on Drugs”, which has been going on for decades, has been about as successful as Prohibition was in the USA. Decriminalisation, and treating drug use as a public health problem rather than a matter for the criminal law, may at least offer a possibility of a better outcome – and frankly if that isn’t something Liberal Democrats can support, then I despair.
What realistic possibilities are there four years from now? I can see only two. One is a Labour-led government kept honest on the environment by the Greens and on civil liberties by the Liberal Democrats – and I would hope that decent one-nation Tories such as Lionel Stock would find that tolerable. The other is a government of Reform and the Badenoch strain of “Conservatism” – from which, the Good Lord deliver us.
Please read the polls, Neil and others! And apply the changes in national support since early July 2024 to the actual results in each of the 632 individual constituencies in Britain, rather than glibly talk in optimistic terms. Of course there remain another three years of political change between now and the next general election, but it is clear that the old two-party duopoly is dead. It’s the proverbial dead parrot! We’re now living in a political environment where there are five distinct parties competing realistically in England, and six each in Scotland and Wales. What is most probable is that no single party is likely to emerge with an overall majority of seats in 2029. The one most likely to do so would be Reform UK, and we all know how disastrous that would be; happily their support seems to have peaked and they are already down about 5% nationally since last autumn. Neither Labour or the Conservatives are likely to win as many as 100 seats in the next parliament on current levels of support, and they – as well as the LibDems and probably the Greens – will be scrabbling for a share in power. What will count will be the willingness of any party to work with others in what we used to call a “hung” parliament. So far no party has taken its head out of the sand and begun to consider the ramifications.
> It’s hard to understand why so many Lib Dems see it as an aberration and betrayal. (The Coalition)
The Conservatives used us as human shields. They claimed our few successes as their own. They launched Austerity and persuaded our leaders that this was needed, lying about scope and motivation. They kneecapped the Environment Agency. Finally there was Operation Black Widow.
Clear now? (Or is all fair in politics?)
@ Peter Chambers “The Conservatives used us as human shields”.
Well, then, ‘we’ were mugs and got what ‘we’ deserved.