The Liberal Democrat membership surge is about to take the party to a landmark 100,000 members – thanks to a staggering 12,500 joining since Theresa May announced the snap General Election last Tuesday.
Reaching six figures makes the party bigger than it has been since the mid-1990s and puts it on course to reach its highest membership ever within days. The biggest the party has been since its formation is 101,768 in 1994.
It means that more than 50,000 members have joined since last year’s European referendum and more than 67,500 since the 2015 General Election.
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron pledged to build the party to 100,000 members by the end of the parliament as a key pledge during his 2015 leadership campaign – but at that point everyone expected the end of the parliament to be 2020.
Tim Farron commented:
Thousands of people are joining the Liberal Democrats every day because they want to change Britain’s future.
People want a strong opposition to Theresa May’s Hard Brexit agenda and the Liberal Democrats are the only party challenging them up and down the country. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour has completely failed, offering no opposition whatsoever and giving Theresa May a blank cheque to pursue a Hard Brexit.
This election is your chance to change the direction of our country. If you want to stop a disastrous Hard Brexit, if you want to keep Britain in the Single Market, if you want a strong opposition to fight for an open, tolerant and united Britain, this is your chance.
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12 Comments
Dizzying and exciting. I do hope HQ systems withstand the strain of all the new members.
Excellent news, I am sure in the next 7 weeks the party will keep growing and the enthusiasm of new members like me, working with experienced old heads, will make a huge difference.
There will be a capacity problem. Emergency finance may need to go into the membership department – even when target seats are looking for every penny. Perhaps there are one or two generous donors out there who can see this.
Brilliant, recall reaching that figure in 1962, came from nowehere.
So plenty of members, plenty of money, now we need plenty of votes. Lets go.
Membership system seems pretty robust. Membership officers in local parties get real time notification each time a new member joins online. My local Party has been calling people the same day they join to welcome them.
How are the online donations going? Wife will kill me if she works out how often I’m just donating a fiver, after awhile it mounts up 😉
The ability to join online has obviously helped enormously. It is encouraging that most of these new members have joined of their own volition as opposed to being recruited on the doorstep. That suggests to me that they are much more likely to stay.
There are so many people out there teetering on the brink of supporting the Lib Dems who need that little bit of extra push in the next few weeks. Monsieur Macron has shown us the way forward.
Spare a thought for us elderly membership secretaries in a Branch, I keep finding members I didnt know we had I can only exist because of the brilliant connect officer at Constituency level. Just an aside this was a virtually derelict branch and now has 131 members and growing.
Must say I never saw it coming.
Great news regarding membership figures and with the French election showing that politics of the centre can overcome political extremism, hope can win over fear, the Lib/Dems message can bring about some rational thinking to our politics here in the UK.
What was it the PM said in the HoC on 29 March? – something like: “Perhaps now, more than ever, the world needs liberal democratic values……” They obviously agree with you, Theresa.
we don’t exactly get “real time” notification – Membership Officers need to keep on looking ! I look several times a day. Immediately try to contact anyone new, and they get other things from us (this is a public post!) quickly,
but it is instant. I had and e-mail from someone today saying they had just signed up, adn a minute later when I looked it was on the Salesforce Site. Excellent.
I am now bumping into people who say that they have joined the Lib Dems!