6 Comments

• William 19th Feb '16 - 8:29pm

  If you start sufficiently low, the only way is up.

  I’m not saying this isn’t good news – it is.

  But I must admit I do worry about people kidding themselves that the fightback will come quickly. It won’t. It will take 20-40 years of hard work to undo the damage done to the party by those who – let’s be honest – should have known better.

• John 19th Feb '16 - 10:37pm

  I’m sick and tired of people doing down the Coalition. The latest results are heartening.

  I live in a Lib Dem led authority that’s been going all through the coalition. It’s all down to us being attacked by Labour and not fighting back (as well as not attacking the Tories).

  Labour have left the political sanity building – what are we doing to move into that space. Answer: not much. Too many Lib Dems are in paralysis in front of Corbynism – psychologically unable to compete in the political market place.

  The question’s clear – are we a country cousin to Labour or an individual party that fights our corner in the marketplace of ideas to get every vote possible. Because i’m starting to give up. From now on i’ll be making hard questions on volunteering – anyone that doesn’t show the competitive spirit to fight on local issues (let’s be honest it’s where the fightback begins) will be given a wide berth.

• Cllr Mark Wright 20th Feb '16 - 9:46am

  Do you have Green Party and SNP figures?

• Greenfield 20th Feb '16 - 2:03pm

  Id be interested in the Green vote as it looks to be about half since the GE from the local results. I would have thought much would now go to Labour.

• Laurence Cox 20th Feb '16 - 4:38pm

  It certainly bears out my feeling from seeing the by-election results posted week by week. The only caveat I have is that by-elections where we have a good chance of winning or where we are defending the seat, we are likely to be working harder than we could at a general election or a full council election. So at the risk of making the sample too small to be usable, I would like to see our average increase in by-elections where we are standing candidates but not seriously competing.

  If we are really up 4% on the 8% average we polled, less than a year after the disaster of 2015, then there is no reason why we could not get up to the high teens by the next General Election. Next time round, left-leaning voters will know that there are many constituencies in the South where only we can defeat incumbent Tories; and that was one factor in our success in 1997.

• Hywel 20th Feb '16 - 11:32pm

  “Next time round, left-leaning voters will know that there are many constituencies in the South where only we can defeat incumbent Tories; and that was one factor in our success in 1997.”

  Possibly – but remember the Labour vote rose in every Lib Dem gain bar one in 97 (Hallam)

  ALDC reported that party’s vote share was up 4.6% in the post May council by-elections – so this is slightly lower than that (though maybe calculated differently as this seems to exclude

  That would point (based on previous ALDC info) to our vote share being 21.8% (vote share in the whole of 2014 was 17.2). In the July-Dec period in 2011 (so comparable with this cycle) the party was polling 22.4% (and went on to get 16% national equivalent vote sahre) so things might actually be slightly down on 4 years ago (the opinion polls – which carry a bit of a health warning – point the same way).

  I think the most worrying figure is that the party has also stood in 67% of by-elections since May 2015 (to Dec 2015). In all of 2014 they stood in 65.9. Given the boost in membership – and the decline you would have expected that to have bounced up a bit more.