Happy Christmas and New Year

Once again, we end the year with more Liberal Democrat MPs, more Liberal Democrat council leaders and more Liberal Democrat councillors than we started the year. We also have in Ed Davey the main party leader who consistently comes out best in the polls.

You have already heard many statistics from myself and others about that progress, so this time I will simply share perhaps my favourite. There are now 25 Liberal Democrat MPs with a majority over 10,000… and just 5 (!) Conservatives.

That is a huge tribute to the personal vote built up by so many of our campaigners, supported by people’s kind collective efforts across the party … and a sign of just how much political trouble the Conservatives are still in. Trouble that Labour has been remarkably quick to run into too. It is impressive how many Liberal Democrat campaigners have been out in the cold and rain, winning council by-elections and building support with campaigns on topics such as the Winter Fuel Allowance.

Willis Marshall’s dramatic win for us in Sheffield recently captured much of the current state of our politics. A cracking Lib Dem campaign and candidate, scoring a 27% vote share increase to take a seat off the Labour Party in an area where we had not won before – and in the process, seeing off Reform – who surged up into second place – by just 10 votes, while the Conservative vote fell by three-quarters. In other words – our areas of success spreading, holding Labour to account and winning ourselves, rather than leaving the political space for the populists to fill.

Such successes are only possible thanks to the generous combined efforts of our members, staff, donors and volunteers. A deep thank you to everyone who has contributed to our successes this year, and the very best of luck for the challenges to come next year. But before that, I hope everyone gets a good break over Christmas and New Year.

Next steps in the party’s strategy

Work is starting on developing our new strategy for this Westminster Parliamentary cycle. How do we build on our success in electing 72 MPs this July and making gains in every round of local elections in the last Parliament? How do we spread our success more widely? And what do we need to change about how we operate to achieve that?

The answers to those and other questions will draw heavily on the work of our General Election Review, chaired by Tim Farron, which is on course to be finalised at the end of the year. Look out for news about their findings and recommendations early in 2025.

But these questions also need your input, which is why we are starting up a round of consultation Zoom calls with local and regional parties to gather views and share some initial thoughts.

You can book a 75 minute Zoom call for the members of your local or regional party to discuss our strategy plans with me by dropping an email to [email protected].

Your views, please

After our last big set of internal Federal Party elections, there was a review of the whole process, which consulted with members and candidates and made a wide-ranging set of recommendations.

The Federal Board is now consulting on the details of how to implement a batch of them that would require rules changes to go to the Federal Spring Conference in March (and so need to be submitted in January).

We have published most of the proposals in draft form, such as technical wording changes to make the rules clearer. We are also consulting on the question of whether or not to raise the nominations threshold, an issue the review recommended to be considered. If you have not seen it yet, you can read more about this and submit your feedback here.

The deadline for responses is 3 January so that the views can be considered at the January Board meeting ahead of that conference submission deadline.

Other party news

Our constitution provides for a leadership election after each general election. The one for this time around was kicked off a few weeks back, with the Federal Board having agreed a timetable and expense limits, based on consultation with the Returning officer. At close of nominations, there was one candidate, Ed Davey, who was therefore declared re-elected unopposed.

In related internal election news, questions quite often come up during internal elections about whether members who have opted-out of fundraising emails or similar are still being sent online voting instructions. Our data and data protection teams at HQ have confirmed that such ballot emails can be sent to all members who have given the party their email address, excluding only those who have explicitly opted out of ballot emails. The party’s central Iterable email system is set up to use this selection for ballot emails. If you are a Returning Officer using a different email system for a party ballot that is not run via Iterable, you can confer with the HQ team to ensure that the right email list is being used.

The written answers to all the committee questions tabled at our last Federal Conference were published on the party website. You can find them here.

* Mark Pack is Party President and is the editor of Liberal Democrat Newswire.