Our Party is working on strategy for the next Parliament and, I hope, beyond.
A key part of business strategy is assessment of risk. A major element in risk is competition – what will competitors do and what risks does that create for us? Strategy must understand context, including the competitive environment. Our market-place is politics, including the structure and future of the party political structure in Britain. There are differences in Scotland, but the broad analysis holds true.
The biggest changes in the political environment are:
- The demise of the two-party system. Both traditional leading parties have lost their sense of identity, which is based on a twentieth-century division between capital and labour. A sentence which had most resonance in my Council Chamber is quoting a Labour member that “this isn’t the party I joined and even less that my parents joined”; some Conservatives accept that it also applies to them. Voters have more important things on their minds than outdated stereotypes.
- First Past the Post, where 30% of the vote can now mean victory.
- The challenges: the lost credibility of underlying economic analysis of the last 45 years; unwillingness to set out the Liberal case and the facts on immigration; the breakdown of consensus about the state and welfare; climate change; the global threat of nationalist populism.
These factors are playing out throughout the democratic world.
What are the risks of a strategy based on the assumption of Reform and Conservatives continuing to fight each other with more or less equal shares of the vote, so allowing Liberal Democrats to come through the middle?
- The next General Election is a long time ahead. Who knows where those two parties will be then? Where is the analysis behind the LibDem assumption?
- Do we really intend to leave most of the traditional Labour vote for Reform to harvest? Evidence suggests they are more likely to come to us if we fight hard with a strong distinctive message. The two factors that hold us back are national policy and campaigning messages aimed overwhelmingly at disillusioned Tories; and the weakness of local LibDem parties across most of the “red wall”.
- In terms of the big choices facing the electorate, the battleground is between Reform and Liberal visions for the future. One is angry, isolationist, authoritarian, incoherent, unpleasant, and more interested in scapegoats than answers. The alternative is Liberal, open, generous, pluralist, and committed to helping people to engage and take power. Do we present ourselves as leading the Liberal option or will we duck the challenge?
- How does our strategy address Labour and Green voters who need convincing reasons to turn to the LibDems as the best alternative to the Reform vision?
We need a strategy which is long-term, broad enough to respond to changes in the political environment, and clearly based on a fundamentally Liberal vision.
* Gordon Lishman is over 70 and has campaigned for older people and on issues concerned with ageing societies for about 50 years. Nowadays, he does it with more feeling!
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8 Comments
Thank you for questioning our current reliance on getting soft Tories to vote for us. Just taking a break from campaigning in which a large part of our local hope rests on such Tories voting for our candidate because that candidate has already proved to be a person who works hard for people. Yet, long term and given the threat from Reform we need a more radical and comprehensive strategy.
Some voters welcomed me as Lib-Dem; “At least you’re not Labour or Tory” was typical comment. BUT then very often go on to say that this country’s politics needs shaking to the core and radically changing and they think Reform has the strength of character to do that so that is who they will vote for.
Of the 2024 Labour GE voters intending to switch for today’s locals, 28% intend to vote Lib Dem, compared to 26% for Reform and just 12% Green, so while concentrating on One Nation Tories may bear some fruit, the much broader electoral strategy would appear to come from targeting progressive voters – not only to cut the Greens off at the pass, but also to regain ground among floaters in working-class areas and in the North of England, along with potentially Scotland and Wales:
https://bsky.app/profile/luketryl.bsky.social/post/3lnznsynkt22a
Yes, an interesting and important set of issues and concerns.
Whilst I have every admiration for what has been achieved thus far, I am certain that had we had a much more defined identity in terms of what we are rather than simply what we intend to do about specific issues, people would relate to us better.
It has been said many times, but is worth reiterating: in addition to specific policies we need to promote the substance of the introduction to our party constitution in which we set out our values. Saying these things once is not enough!! And it sets our policies in a wider context rather than simply being yet another set of ‘mere’ political promises about which people can be very cynical.
“The battleground is between Reform and Liberal visions for the future,” you write, Gordon, and thank you for setting it out so coherently. We as intellectuals respond to this, and also, like Graham above, think our values as listed in the Preamble are self-evidently good and worth publicising.
But it seems to me that in practical terms, Reform is as big threat to us as it is to the two biggest parties. Even in Tim Farron’s constituency last June, canvassing with him, we came across voters saying they would vote Reform. And now it seems today that Reform is winning a huge number of Council seats. We will hope and expect that our Lib Dem councillors will be able to show that they are a shallow protest collection, with the wrong or none policies, unable to serve their communities as our Lib Dems do. But nationally, we are going to have to show that we can afford our excellent policies, developing a coherent economic strategy which will indeed lead to ordinary people becoming better off, and able to see our Keynesian contribution.
Gordon has always had a talent for sober agenda setting – very welcome at a time of overlapping crises!
Ed Davey says today:
“We are the antidote to Reform’s hate and division.
But we’re going to need your help.
So please, help us fight back against Reform’s well-funded machine”.
So, if we send you the money to take on Reform: WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO SPEND IT??
Well said Gordon, You show a clearly changed competitive landscape.
This requires change in many ways. But most importantly if the country is crying out for change [ and the volatility seems to confirm this] what is our change message , what are we going to change that helps people have hope, especially for those more vulnerable to the reform cure all snake oil? Just being against the Tories does not solve the issue.
We cannot afford to allow Reform to take the high moral ground when it comes to public services and treating people with dignity. We need a much clearer vision of what sort of Party we are that appeals to those who wish to leave their children a country worth living and fighting for. We should campaign on a platform of more equality, fairness, environmental justice and human rights while also helping people with the issues that concern them locally.