Long ago, working in primary care management, I was struck by how the partners of an excellent GP practice, replacing a retiring partner, had not even asked themselves how their area might change over 20 years or so and whether this might influence their choice. In my Liberal Democrat local party and region, it was clear to me many local parties were stumbling on, doing what they knew, grumbling about too much work and not enough people, knowing their activists were ageing, but doing little to find new ones: plenty of hard work, but no vision, no strategy.
So I became an advocate for local party Development Plans before the English Party pushed the issue and made a development plan a constitutional requirement for local parties (that’s fixed, then). As Chair of my Region’s Development Committee, I’ve been encouraging and advising on the things ever since.
If you’re in a hole, discover how deep the hole is and how to get out of it. If you’ve made progress but reached a plateau, identify the pinch points and what can be done. A basic tool for this is a SWOT analysis (not to be confused with heavily armed police: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats.).
If this is a good idea for local parties, as I’m convinced it is, what about higher levels?
Regional Parties will have strategies, but they may well not include a hard look at existing strengths and weaknesses. The English Party and the Federal Party have various plans, often quickly forgotten, but apparently nothing like a Development Plan; strategy means the next election (as in Ed Davey’s “Guardian” interview) and SWOT analysis could be embarrassing.
What would a SWOT analysis for the whole party right now look like?
Of course, strengths would include 72 MPs, with the credibility the election result brings us. Another would be an HQ election operation, unlike 2015 and 2019, that listens to local feedback, looks at Connect input and opinion polls and reacts accordingly. Then, a comparatively open and democratic party, compared to Labour’s obsessive top-down control; and many hardworking councillors.
Weaknesses? Are there any? There are. For a start, after the surge in 2019, by all accounts party membership went into deep and spectacular decline, though figures have not been published for some time. Our campaigns need activists; activists are drawn from the membership; so a deep decline in membership is serious, possibly fatal. Increases at general election time are normal; we hear this has happened, but how much? Without openness about the figures, no judgment can be made. But will new members fall away as most of the 2018-9 recruits did? Local parties should prioritise not just recruiting members, but engaging them, and not just in leafleting. Yet the pressure from the centre is for an almost Soviet programme of getting them working and harder, harder, harder! Fine, but can they also have fun?
It is a familiar story that parties find it politically expedient to oppose new homes being built, particularly within a given politician’s local area. It happens time and again, even among those who profess an understanding or recognition of the scale of the housing crisis and its injustice.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
The Fenland floods of 1947
A transition plan emerges...
Reform UK had bank account frozen during general election
expats
Nonconformistradical
John C
Nigel Jones