Since the results of the 2026 Local Elections, there has rightly been some deep analysis of where we are as a party. Colleagues have argued that we are abandoning the North of England, only focusing on leafy rural areas and are ignoring our cities. While I wholly agree with this criticism, I think it misses an even more crucial point. Even in areas which are becoming our ‘new heartlands’, we are stagnating or even slipping back.

This brings us to West Sussex. As a local member, I do have more to celebrate than some around the country. For the first time since 1997, the Conservatives have lost control of the council, with us being the leading party, albeit tied with Reform. It also looks like we will be able to come to an agreement with other parties and lead the council. However, this top-down analysis misses a tale of two halves.

While in our held constituencies, Chichester, Horsham and Mid Sussex, the party made excellent gains, outside of these constituencies, a different story unfolded. Take Arun District as an example. Of the ten divisions we held before the elections, two of them came from this part of Sussex, namely Bognor Regis East and Littlehampton East. After the 2026 Election, of our 23 seats, none are in Arun District.

Both of the aforementioned seats were lost to Reform, with longstanding councillors losing their opportunity to represent their communities in the new administration. This reflects a national pattern. In areas deemed ‘unfavourable’ or as not having the ‘right demographics’, the party is surrendering ground to new radical alternatives.

Arun District should not be a place where we are losing ground. But even in the 2023 Local Elections, where we excelled across the country, we slipped back here. Too often when speaking to voters on the doorsteps during this year’s campaign, we heard the same message, ‘we like you locally, but we want to punish the government, so we will vote for Reform’. Without us having a clear national message, one with liberal ideas and values at its heart, we will continue to lose in areas like this that we need for future success. Currently,  as we are not seen as important enough on the national scene to even be worth a protest vote for many

Worthing is another clear example of the growing trend of abandoning parts of the country that don’t fit the imagined conception of a Lib Dem area. During the 1990s and early 2000s, we controlled Worthing Borough Council, with Labour and the Greens having no real presence until 2018 onwards. However, by 2024, we had been wiped off the council. While I am overjoyed to see us return to the council this year, thanks to the hard work of the local party, I am dismayed to see the Greens breaking through.

Why is it that they were viewed as the progressive alternative in Worthing rather than us? I would argue that it is because we have given up on trying to talk to areas like Worthing. Where are our national figures talking about the decline of seaside towns? Where are our policies to help regenerate these areas? Where is our support for students who make up a growing population in places like Worthing? For us to make progress long into the future, this needs to change, or else we risk becoming a sectional interest party, focused only on those places we have already won. Our party needs more ambition.

There is no clearer example of this lack of ambition than the Arundel and South Downs constituency. This is one of only 27 seats where we placed second in 2024. If we are aiming for 100+ in 2029, as I think we must, victory has to flow through here. However, the council elections show that even in places where we must win to make progress in the short term, we are failing.

Across the constituency, only one division elected a Lib Dem councillor, and this was a seat we already held. In the rest of the constituency, other parties did better, with the Greens and Reform making gains while the Tories held firm. Our failure to gain ground should not be masked as a success just because we gained seats in areas we already held. Arundel and South Downs shows that something is clearly not working.

West Sussex should serve as a warning cry for the wider party; success in areas we already do well in is not success for the future. West Sussex nearly fell to Reform because we limited our ambitions. Reform only missed out on being the largest party here by one vote in the last division to declare. If we had looked beyond our ‘new heartlands’, we could have won even bigger and kept Reform from power by a more comfortable margin. This time, we were lucky, but without expanding our scope, we may not be so lucky in the upcoming Sussex Mayoral race.

* Thomas Worth is the President of the Sussex University Liberal Democrats and was a local election candidate in West Sussex.