Many of us are imagining what it might be like to experience a major surge in support like that being enjoyed by Reform UK at the moment, and to a lesser extent by the Greens. However I have always argued that slow steady growth is much more sustainable, especially for a centrist party based on strong values rather than populism, and there are some good examples from this week.
I am looking at East Surrey and West Surrey, where the councillors have been elected to set up the new unitaries in 2027 to replace Surrey County Council.
The last full elections to Surrey County Council were in 2021; 81 seats were up for grabs with these results: 47 Con (58%), 14 Lib Dem (17%), 2 Lab (2.5%), 2 Green (2.5%) and 16 other (20%). The others are mainly Residents Associations.
And yet on Thursday we won both of the new authorities.
On Thursday, there were 162 new seats in total in East and West Surrey. The combined results were: 96 Lib Dem (59%), 30 Con (19%), 14 Ref (8.5%), 8 Green (5%) and 14 other (8.5%). How did that happen?
To understand the apparent leap in our seats from 17% to 59% we have to track all the smaller gains made in the intervening years. This wasn’t a sudden and unexpected victory but a steady build-up over time.
For a start we were beavering away at the County Council by-elections as they occurred. By the time of this election the Conservatives were already down to 38 (from 47) and we were up to 18 (from 14).
But a more revealing picture emerges when we look at the gains in the eleven District Councils within Surrey. All of them elect by thirds so the effects were cumulative over time. By this year we had taken control of Woking, Mole Valley and Surrey Heath and we had become the largest party in Elmbridge, Guildford, and Waverley, so we were effectively running more than half the districts.
On top of that we made some important gains in Westminster in 2024. Prior to that we had no Lib Dem MPs in the county. Of the 13 constituencies we won six, and welcomed Chris Coghlan in Dorking and Horley, Will Forster in Woking, Zoe Franklin in Guildford, Monica Harding in Esher and Walton, Helen Maguire in Epsom and Ewell and Al Pinkerton in Surrey Heath.
So you can see that gaining control – and very convincingly – of both East and West Surrey is part of a natural progression, and inherently sustainable. Along the way the local parties have grown in membership, activism and expertise so that they are well placed to maintain the position in future.
Similar analyses could have been applied to the adjacent current Lib Dem strongholds of Richmond, Kingston and Sutton. If we go back 40 or more years to the times when they were all held by the Conservatives, we can can track gradual and steady growth – first one ward, then a few more, then control of the Council, then MPs.
I offer this as encouragement to those local parties who have not done as well as they might have hoped, or feel trapped in a hopeless situation. I can tell them about the first time I was asked to be a paper candidate in Kingston – I didn’t stand, but our candidate got 6% of the votes. Eight years later we won the same ward with 57% – again not me that time – but we had kept working at it with good community politics. Slow and steady, with lots of engagement between elections, is what eventually wins sustainably.
* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
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15 Comments
Absolutely right, Mary. And a gradual steady build increases residents’ confidence and makes it easier to hold on to what we have as well as extending into newer territory. There are local parties out there in the earlier stages of doing exactly the same thing, but because they don’t suddenly post dramatic gains they don’t get the same attention, funding or central support.
A bit like the Residents Association councillors then.
A Lib Dem gained a seat in Tower Hamlets, good to see. None in Greenwich sadly
With particular emphasis on the word “slow”. Local campaigners are doing all they can but its a mixed bag of results to say the least and I find the tone a little too upbeat. We can’t just be the new SNP (Surrey National Party) but need to make more progress in urban areas where church roofs aren’t the number 1 priority.
Maybe it depends on where you live, but in inner London where I am we have just seen the Greens romp past us – even in some wards where they put in little if any ‘ground war’ effort and where our teams worked heartbreakingly hard to no avail.
And going ‘slow and steady’ when Farage is going ‘fast and dynamic’ simply doesn’t address the democratic emergency that now confronts us all. We are in danger of becoming a niche party – for the educated, reasonably well-off, middle-class, predominantly white (Gails Bakery territory – or Surrey National Party – thanks @Marco!) but increasingly politically irrelevant elsewhere.
We need to be bold and ambitious and respond to the worries and motivations of the struggling, feeling left out and inner-city residents as well as what is now our ‘natural’ supporter base.
Keith Sharp – my point is about sustainable growth. We too have had our sudden surges – mainly in Westminster by-elections when we can pile in resources -which have then disappeared at the next General Election.
However I do agree with you that now we have established a base we should focus on a wider range of areas.
“and respond to the worries and motivations of the struggling”
I like the sound of that, but its never been tried before, and I don’t think it will catch-on. Indeed, democracy has only lasted this long, because it was never intended to carry out the wishes of the majority of voters.
I see that Laura Kuenssberg didn’t have a Liberal Democrat or a Green on her programme this morning. We won more councils than the Conservatives, the Greens and Reform. We won more councillors than the Conservatives and the Greens. And yet the Conservatives were on the programme and there were 2 Reform representatives. When will the BBC treat us fairly? We need to bombard them with complaints week after week after week.
Taking Keith Sharps point, the Lib Dem campaign has worked well in those areas that have relatively done better, but this is not the case for many areas that cannot wait for the money to put into solutions.
People will not accept increased taxes at a time of austerity with the current system.
The Green Party has produced a solution which is Wealth tax on excessive wealth over £10 million at current valuation and it is appealing to many sections of the electorate.
This originally is Gary Stevenson’s policy.
Liberal democrat policy, when Charles Kennedy was leader, did consider taxing wealth as a temporary measure, but would need to gradual and will therefore take longer.
This measure would be temporary to allow ordinary people to obtain public ownership of the economy by company share purchases, etc. Wealth taxation can even be expressed as share ownership transfer by the state and selling direct to the public (at a discount).
It would also mean extending knowledge and benefits of public share ownership and how markets work to the general population.
“slow steady growth is much more sustainable”
Maybe, but, as we only have major elections every few years, they don’t really tell us anything about current trands. The pollsters may not have it perfectly right but they are pretty good. It’s well worth keeping track on what they are saying. Their findings explain why Reform aren’t doing quite as well as they were a year or so ago and these give us some reason to be optimistic that they can be beaten.
From a LibDem POV the picture is looking more like a slow steady decline though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election
“Liberal democrat policy, when Charles Kennedy was leader, ”
Which was 20 years ago and the party is quite significantly, if not fundamentally, different from what it was then.
“the Lib Dem campaign has worked well in those areas that have relatively done better,”
Broadly a fair analysis. I think the typical Lib Dem voter now is probably someone who worries about their energy bills going up but has direct debits going to charities and their ISA.
But its an important point – there is nothing wrong per se in identifying a group of voters whose support you can win and targeting them with both policy and electoral messages.
.@ Hywell “Which was 20 years ago and the party is quite significantly, if not fundamentally, different from what it was then”.
As someone who joined the Grimond Liberal Party way back in 1961, that is part of the problem, Hywell.
@Mary: of course sustainable growth is desirable but for us it is also largely (OK not entirely but largely) illusory. I think I am correct in saying that Tim Farron is our only MP who has held his seat since before 2017 (Ed was of course re-elected then having lost in 2015). In Islington, we ran the Council (2000-2010 when I was lucky enough to be a Councillor); yet we have not had a single Councillor since 2014. And so on.
So if we patiently build from a local base, there’s still no assurance of sustainability. And meantime, Farage and the Greens are growing visibility and resource at the ‘air war’ national narrative level. With the Greens polling at 20% against our 12-13% and with (reportedly) 200,000 + members, it’s inevitable that’s going to show through at election time. This is not an argument against ‘local build’ but that alone is not enough – certainly not in this modern world of digital communications.
We are now building so much as everyone else is retreating or surging. We have no ambition or plans coming from the top and that’s fatal in a time of great change. We need leaders who are fit for purpose.
Some of our success in East Surrey could be due to the intervention of Reform UK who took some of the other non-LD votes (Residents Association, Conservative, Green, Labour). For example, Ewell Village, Stoneleigh & Nonsuch ward returned two LD wins with 16% and 15% of the votes in the 6-way contest. That ward had been safe Residents Association in my time. I wish I had been at the count!