We have a chance this May to achieve something we’ve only ever managed twice before in our party’s entire history: make it five rounds of local election net gains in a row.
We should be excited about that possibility. Not only for reasons of psephology but also for reasons of power.
Every gain we make will mean more people benefiting from Liberal Democrats in office, and every gain we make will mean more opportunity to turn our policies into action.
Policies such as the great record in Eastleigh of building new houses – and keeping on winning elections.
To keep our run of local election gains going in May we need two things: candidates and teams to help them. The last time this round of seats were up for election, our calculations show that we missed out on several hundred (yes, hundred) further gains because we didn’t have enough candidates in winnable territory.
Centrally, the party is doing more to publicise the opportunities to be a candidate and to encourage more people to think about i., (The data from these surveys ends up in Lighthouse so it’s available to all local parties.)
But nothing quite beats the in person conversation, the chat over coffee, to help more people realise what a great candidate and councillor they would be.
That’s particularly important for potential candidates for under-represented groups, who can need that extra encouragement that our party is a welcoming home for them.
Then we need to get our candidates elected, which is where help from people who don’t have local elections in their own area can be so important. Going to help in person or picking up the phone to make some calls makes the difference in close contests.
If you can help with either of these tasks, please do. There’s also a wide range of free training available to help you make the most of these opportunities.
Working together, we can get more Liberal Democrats elected and get more things done such as turning a disused rubbish tip bequeathed by a Conservative-run council into a successful solar farm, helping our planet and generating income to pay for high quality local services.
The paradox at the heart of British politics
Alongside that local picture, there’s a paradox in our national politics we also need to navigate our way through.
The public increasingly views Brexit negatively. The headline figures show a slow but sustained, long-term trend.
Some of this change comes from long-term demographic trends as those joining the adult population are overall much more pro-European than the average. Some of it too comes from people changing their minds – although much of that is a churn to/from don’t know.
In fact, when YouGov recently asked about how people would vote in a new referendum, there was only a net 1.5% of people switching direct all the way from Leave to Remain. Moreover, those increasing pro-European views are also often quite soft. Put simply, the more that the possible conditions of Britain rejoining the EU are mentioned, the further support drops.
Even so, the overall trends are clearly headed in the right direction given our pro-Europeanism. Yet there is a paradox here. Because while public opinion is increasingly negative about Brexit, public opinion is even more strongly of the view that the most important issues to people, their families and to the country are other topics.
Different pollsters ask these questions in different ways, but the pattern of answers is similar. That pattern matters because, as the last general election showed, however much we might wish the election to be about one issue, in a democracy the voters get to choose what an election is about – and they can choose to make it about something else.
Today the most important issues are the economy, cost of living and health services. These affect people directly, now, in very practical and obvious ways.
Many people face big waits for a GP appointment, can’t get on an NHS dentist waiting list, worry about ambulance times if things do go wrong, and millions are stuck on waiting lists.
Overwhelmingly, the public wants to hear those who seek to lead them concentrating on these issues. Talking about other issues instead can feel at best like missing the point and at worst disrespectful to the immediate pressures and worries they face.
The way to show these voters we understand their lives is to talk about the economy, the NHS, practical issues in their area affecting their lives, and the underlying sense of being taken for granted by the Conservatives.
Party Awards: get your nominations in
With our spring federal conference just around the corner, now is the time to get your nominations in for our Party Awards. We’ll be giving our four awards in York, recognising colleagues who have shown great leadership, newer members who have already made a major contribution to the party, great election campaigners and those who make fantastic contributions behind the scenes.
More details and links to nominate great people you know here.
How Lib Dems improve health and social care provision
Earlier this month I did a local party event with members in Somerset, which is now home to the largest Liberal Democrat group in the country. It’s impressive what the team there is doing with political power, including building a new net zero school and also innovative work with the NHS.
As The Times recently reported:
Health leaders in Somerset recognise that many traditional models of healthcare are not fit for the future. Instead of demanding more from stretched employees or pouring money into hospitals, they believe solutions to the NHS crisis can be found in the village halls, park benches and farmers’ markets at the heart of Somerset’s communities. Patients are kept at home as long as possible, rather than “chucked” somewhere else. And if they do have to be admitted to hospital, it is designed as an experience which should “empower” them…
This focus on keeping patients active and independent pays off: more than half of patients who spend time on the ward go home with a less intensive package of social care support than was originally planned. Patients waiting to be discharged get stronger and are rehabilitated, rather than deteriorating as their muscles waste away…
“We have no right to move people from their own homes and chuck them somewhere else,” says Mel Lock, Somerset’s director of adult social care. “How would you like it if you were whipped into hospital then moved into care and never got home again? You could never pack your bags or say goodbye to your house. Hospitals are there to mend people. People already have a bed — their own bed in their own homes. Let’s get them back there.”
That’s why getting more Liberal Democrats elected is so important.
The Board’s priorities
At our January meeting, the Federal Board has reviewed the core priorities set out in the strategy motion passed by conference earlier this Parliament:
- Developing a compelling and distinctive narrative
- Campaigning excellence
- Improving our record on diversity and inclusion
- Giving our members and registered supporters an excellent experience
- Working together as one party
We’ve agreed that these still make sense, and therefore rather than proposing a new framework to conference, we’re concentrating on working with others in the party on the next phase of implementing them.
Other parts of the party, particularly the three state parties for England, Scotland and Wales, have important responsibilities in these areas too and the Board’s plans are deliberately aligned with their priorities. The resources that the state parties allocate are an important part of making a success of the overall strategy.
Our Board agendas for the rest of the year are being planned around these priorities, with the meetings cycling around aspects of each of them to look at. For our February meeting the focus will be on internal communications and then at the meeting after that we will be looking at our approach to improving the party’s record on diversity and inclusion.
Filling party posts
Thank you to everyone who has recently applied for one of the 30+ federal party posts we’re currently filling across various committees and party bodies. At time of writing, these applications and elections are still underway, so watch out in future reports for news of who the new people are along with the York spring conference agenda which includes three proposed new members of the Federal Appeals Panel.
All these sorts of roles are advertised on the party website, in the Work for Us section. Do keep an eye on that page if you might be interested in future opportunities.
As ever, if you have questions on any of this, or other party matters, do get in touch on [email protected]. Do also get in touch if you’d like to invite me to do a Zoom call with your local party or party body
* Mark Pack is Party President and is the editor of Liberal Democrat Newswire.
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19 Comments
Good summary, Mark, of what polling tells us about Europe as an electoral issue.
It is impossible to separate Brexit from the other issues people care about because Brexit is one of the main underlying problems and the elephant the room when these matters are discussed.
Saying “there is a net swing of 1.5% from leave to remain distorts the figures. The most recent You Gov poll found that 20% of leave voters said UK wrong to leave vs only 6% of remain voters saying right to leave (it also has us up to 10% 👍 )
@Marco: there’s a difference between saying ‘it was wrong to Leave’ and saying ‘I’d vote to rejoin’. E.g. there are some people who regret what was happened but who also think that rejoining would be a wrong (i.e. a mistake has been made but, in their view, it can’t be undone now). Hence the different figures; I was quoting figures about how people would vote in a future referendum, while your figures are about regretting/not regretting what has happened.
“The way to show these voters we understand their lives is to talk about the economy, the NHS …”
It sounds like the Lib Dem strategy is to fix these things by making Brexit work rather than by rejoining the EU. Who’d have thought it?!
So, Peter, what you are saying is we should now, post-Brexit, not campaign to improve any facet of contemporary Britain, because this would be making Brexit better?
@ Mark Pack – The real point is that we should be loudly and clearly pointing out how Brexit is not delivering and that we therefore at least need a closer relationship with Europe. The majority of voters would seem to agree so the current silence is inexplicable. This isn’t just about polls it is about doing the right thing for the country and taking away Labour’s cover to avoid the issue.
2nd paragraph of that Times article you quote.My cousin is in rehab in an NHS/council facility cos the hospital he was in did not have enough physio staff,he was hence transferred to rehab. .His muscles had deteriorated.Now with loose family support (hence community) he is on the mend and is expected to be able to go home with little support. If community support starts before hospitalisation NHS or in cooperation with the NHS hospitals could be less pressured.
Given the mess our country is in at present it should not be too difficult to convince the majority of the electorate that working amiably and constructively with our close allies in the EU would be of great benefit to each and everyone of us, the only people to have gained from Brexit, in my view, are the self serving politicians who lied about the benefits of leaving.
Mark, you’re equating ‘talking about Brexit’ with ‘campaigning immediately to rejoin’, which is not what I, or many others, have argued for – as I’m sure you know. It is impossible to fix the important issues you identify – the economy, cost of living and health services – without a much stronger relationship with the EU. Since we are currently the only one of the major parties that believe that, saying it publicly would not only help to offer a solution to these problems but give us the distinctiveness that we currently lack. It would be a good way of meeting the first of the Board’s priorities, to ‘develop a compelling and distinctive narrative’. If you disagree with that, let’s discuss the reasons why, not a straw-man argument about rejoining.
It’s worth remembering that the polling that shows that people increasingly believe Brexit was a mistake is happening against a backdrop where the Government continues to tout imaginary Brexit benefits, and both ourselves and Labour are soft-pedalling on the issue.
Without campaigning for immediate rejoin, imagine what could be achieved if we were bold enough to loudly push regulatory alignment, Single Market membership, and (dare I say it) Freedom of Movement as part of the solution to the everyday problems ordinary people currently face in their lives.
I know this is sort of our policy at the moment, but we are whispering not shouting.
I fully support what Duncan Brack says. As I wrote in my last LDV piece, voters and the party can only benefit if we visibly stand up for what we believe in. For now, that means keeping open the prospect of joining the Customs Union and Single Market (as Layla Moran
argued on 31 January in the Independent). Otherwise silence can be seen as consent.
Mark: you often warn us about interpreting polls correctly and yet I think you have fallen into your own trap here. It’s clear that few votes want to re-join the EU immediately. However, many share our party’s opinion that we need a closer relationship with our European neighbours – as our party’s policy clearly states.
The economy, the cost of living, health services are all suffering because of Brexit. We know that voters in the UK as well as in Europe are concerned about these issues. One of the solutions is to remove or at least reduce barriers to trade and movement of labour between the UK and Europe – to enable exports, to recruit for the health service, and more generally to strengthen the economy.
Let’s talk more about how a closer relationship with our European friends will be beneficial for the UK.
I accept the existence of the Brexit paradox but:
1) Labour will also talk about the economy, cost of living and health services. If we talk about nothing else how will we stand out?
2) We should be showing leadership, so trying to coax public debate onto our own pro-Europe territory. (Remember that when the House of Commons was first divided on a motion that the UK should join the EEC, it was a Liberal motion which attracted only the votes of the then 6 Liberal MPs.)
3) Surely we can show that the problems of the economy, cost of living and health services are largely caused by Brexit.
Tom Barney 19th Feb ’23 – 11:30am:
3) Surely we can show that the problems of the economy, cost of living and health services are largely caused by Brexit.
On most measures the EU is in worse shape than the UK…
‘Is the EU rapidly going bust? Bankruptcies soar to highest level on record’ [18th. February 2023]:
https://facts4eu.org/news/2023_feb_eu_going_bust
‘Poorest in UK have £40 a month less to spare than a year ago, study finds’ [24th. January 2023]:
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jan/24/poorest-in-uk-have-40-a-month-less-to-spare-than-a-year-ago-study-finds
‘European Union Food Inflation’:
https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/food-inflation
@Duncan: I think our MPs, including Ed, do regularly say just that, such as:
Daisy Cooper – https://twitter.com/LibDemNewswire/status/1611814803714064385
Ed Davey – https://twitter.com/LBC/status/1623781735614894080
Layla Moran: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-anniversary-rejoin-single-market-red-tape-b2272679.html
Sarah Olney – https://twitter.com/sarahjolney1/status/1620363938662871040
If there’s a straw-man argument knocking around here, I’d suggest it’s the idea that our MPs aren’t regularly pointing out the problems with Brexit in public?
‘Regularly’ is doing a lot of work there .. there are almost no other recent examples, and very few indeed during the whole of 2022. If the items you’ve listed – particularly Layla’s article, which was very welcome – are the start of a trend, that will be good news. But since your own post appears to argue against highlighting the issue, I’m not sure it will be …
Mark Pack would be well advised to listen (and to act on) what such a respected figure as Duncan Brack has to say.
Cost of living, problems with the health service and economy “largely caused by Brexit”?
This is a pro-European and internationalist party: please escape the UK village then and look at what’s happening elsewhere in Europe. We have very similar problems here in Spain where I live. Ditto in France and Italy which I know very well.
There are clearly other short term factors: have you all forgotten the huge impact of the Ukraine war on energy prices and food!
And also long-term factors: ageing populations and long-term above average medical inflation have impacted health services throughout the developed world. And do you remember something called covid? That’s had major medium-term knock on effects on the health service here in Spain.
So let’s not exaggerate!
Highlighting Europe is OK, if it doesn’t take us over as at the last election.