Tag Archives: 2019 general election

Paul Walter

We did dreadfully badly amongst lower earners and those without university degrees – poll of 13,000 voters on election day

By Paul Walter | Mon 16th December 2019 - 7:23 pm

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Lord Ashcroft has published the results of a poll his organisation conducted with 13,000 voters on election day.

The output from the 29 questions gives some interesting insights and can be read here, complete with clear graphs and downloadable xls data tables.

A few observations from me. Based on this sample:

  • It is noticeable that a high proportion of our voters were “AB” in socio-economic terms. 15% of ABs voted for us (two points of the across-the-board total of 12% in this poll). But

…

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Posted in News | 66 Comments
Paul Pettinger

Prioritising soft Conservative voters will always lead to failure

By Paul Pettinger | Sat 14th December 2019 - 12:30 pm

I strongly agree with Nick Barlow’s call yesterday for the Party to do some serious introspection. We failed to properly do so after 2014 and 2015 and we won’t proceed on firm foundations until we do.

One reason the 2019 General Election campaign was so disastrous for us was because Labour leaning remainers went back to supporting Labour in droves. Other parties attempt to squeeze us at every Election, so this shouldn’t be a surprise. But what should deeply concern us is the degree to which Labour’s squeeze took effect and what we did to help make this happen.

The …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 59 Comments
The Voice

Thanks!

By The Voice | Fri 13th December 2019 - 10:36 pm

You viewed Liberal Democrat Voice 25,892 times today.

Thank you for making us the place you come to when the proverbial solids of fate hit the Vent-Axia© of the Electoral Process.

(RIP Humphrey Lyttelton).

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Posted in Site news | Also tagged | 15 Comments
Fraser Graham

The Election Result – musings of a (relative) newbie

By Fraser Graham | Fri 13th December 2019 - 4:45 pm

I joined the Lib Dems in 2016, on the day after the leave vote happened. At the time, if felt I could no longer be a bystander, I had to do something. In the time since, I certainly have, becoming the convener of my local party and a committee member of the LGBT+ Lib Dems.

When I joined the party, my thoughts were primarily on Brexit, and the party’s stance of opposing it. But as I’ve become more involved, met members, attended conferences I have realised how much more we are and how truly I do belong.

I spent last …

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Posted in Op-eds | 9 Comments
Paul Walter

9am update

By Paul Walter | Fri 13th December 2019 - 10:08 am

This email has come into members’ inboxes from Shaun Roberts, the party’s Director of Campaigns and Elections:

I’m tired, I’m sad and I’m frustrated, (member).

In 6 seats, we were less than a thousand votes away from winning. That is agonising. Some of these campaigns saw increases in vote share of 20-30% – an extraordinary leap forward, achieved by hard work from fantastic teams.

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Posted in News | 49 Comments
Mary Reid

Winter elections

By Mary Reid | Tue 10th December 2019 - 4:35 pm

The last time there was a General Election in December was in 1923. The BBC has a fascinating account of the event.

It was not a particularly cold winter, more dull and drizzly than crisp and blindingly white, although there were occasional snow and sleet flurries with December seeing a mean temperature of 3.9C.

Houses were decorated with festive bunting and heated by coal fires, shopping streets bustled with rattling trams and women wore ankle-length skirts and cloche hats.

The Representation of the People Act five years previously had given them the vote, although not all women – only those aged 30 or over who owned property worth at least £5, which accounted for about two thirds of the nation’s women (full voting rights would come in 1928).

Back in 2012, Mark Pack brilliantly developed a suggestion I had made to the LDV team and reported the Government’s proposal to move the day of local elections from May to February. There were howls of protest until someone noticed the date.  I particularly loved the final sentence:

As a planned cost saving measure, if the last Thursday in February falls on a leap day, the elections will be skipped and all incumbents automatically re-elected …

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Paul Walter

Jo Swinson is impressive under the Andrew Neil grilling

By Paul Walter | Wed 4th December 2019 - 10:17 pm

Jo Swinson gave a very impressive performance under the grilling of Andrew Neil this evening on primetime BBC1. (You can view it here).

She was confident, offering contrition on the mistakes of the coalition and outlining the Liberal Democrat positions clearly.

There are plenty of past examples of car crash interviews with Andrew Neil at the helm. Jo did very well under his forensic questioning.

Here’s a selection of tweets reacting to tonight’s programme:

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Paul Walter

Traditional Tory voters in London are coming across to the LibDems

By Paul Walter | Tue 3rd December 2019 - 7:30 pm

Siobhan Benita, our London spokesperson and 2020 mayoral candidate (right), has been campaigning for LibDem candidates all over London. Yesterday she spoke to me about how things are going. This was her assessment:

I think it is going really well. We’re definitely seeing, in some of our key target seats, what we’ve heard here (in City of London and Westminster), which is (that) especially traditional Conservative voters, are (coming across to the LibDems). (This is) not just about Brexit – what we were hearing in Kensington yesterday, for example with Sam’s team, and a lot of the older voters there who have only ever voted Conservative, were saying they don’t associate with Boris Johnson’s Conservative party – they don’t like him – they don’t like the lies he is saying – and for the first time ever – some of them had already postal voted – they’d already given us their vote. So I think we are definitely seeing that across the capital. The nice thing for me, I think as well, is that I know we are obviously strong in parts of London – say south-west London – we have traditionally been strong. I’m definitely getting that sense in the north as well, in Finchley and Golders Green it’s going to be really really exciting there too. So I am hoping that we can – you know – change the map across London and that we’ll be seeing yellow pockets across London, other than the south-west – but I think we’ll grow there as well.

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Posted in London and News | Also tagged and | 23 Comments
Paul Walter

Hugh Grant on Boris Johnson: Sinister, narcissistic and alarming with potentially no principles at all

By Paul Walter | Tue 3rd December 2019 - 8:55 am

Chuka Umunna and Hugh Grant talk with the press yesterday in St John’s Gardens, London SW1

“Could someone interview Hugh Grant tomorrow?” came the call from our esteemed LDV editor Caron, late on Sunday.

Well, one of the advantages of being gloriously retired is that you can often turn on a sixpence. So I jumped at the chance to interview the great man despite basic logistics issues such as “where” and “when” being still unclear. As these basics remained unclear as hours passed I realised I would have to bring forward my powers of initiative and assertiveness.

Fortunately, thanks to the great assistance of our old friend Dr Evan Harris of Hacked Off and Helen Davies, chair of City of London and Westminster Liberal Democrats, yesterday I was introduced to Hugh Grant as a “friend” and got my three minutes with him. You can hear the whole interview here on SoundCloud. (It includes a section about press abuse.)

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The Voice

Stop Brexit. Build a brighter future. (The movie)

By The Voice | Fri 1st November 2019 - 7:27 pm

Here is the video that accompanied the launch of our election slogan yesterday. Enjoy!

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The Voice

+++Breaking news – our campaign slogan for the general election

By The Voice | Thu 31st October 2019 - 11:38 am

The Liberal Democrat slogan for the General Election has now been unveiled. It was heavily trailed in advance so it should not come as a surprise to anyone!

 

 

 

 

Posted in News | 57 Comments
Paul Walter

Sam Gyimah to stand for Lib Dems in Kensington

By Paul Walter | Wed 30th October 2019 - 12:00 pm

Sam tweets:

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Paul Walter

Stephen Lloyd MP intends to stand for the Lib Dems in Eastbourne

By Paul Walter | Wed 30th October 2019 - 10:30 am

Stephen Lloyd MP has posted a YouTube video for his Eastbourne constituents. In it, he says that he has kept his word and voted for a EU exit withdrawal bill four times in parliament. He adds that, now he has done that, the slate is wiped clean with the forthcoming general election, so he will now be a ‘full throated’ “remainer”. He states that intends to stand in Eastbourne as the Liberal Democrat candidate.

This now means that there are 20 Liberal Democrat MPs in the House of Commons.

Here is Stephen’s video:

And here Layla Moran welcomes Stephen back to the Liberal …

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 8 Comments
Paul Walter

Fortune favours the bold

By Paul Walter | Wed 30th October 2019 - 8:54 am


And so we head into an election campaign as ‘the goose is getting fat’ and Brenda from Bristol boards up her front door to keep out invading journalists.

We’ve whirled around and around the entire gamut of constitutional and Brexit permutations many times, and so we end up with a general election when the Rubic’s Cube of parliamentary arithmetic will be re-spun. Then the whole darn thing will start again.

It is somewhat forbidding to face the prospect of knocking on doors in the ‘deep mid-winter’.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 11 Comments
Paul Walter

Professor John Curtice predicts big gains for Lib Dems in 12th December election

By Paul Walter | Tue 29th October 2019 - 9:46 pm

From LBC:

The UK’s leading election expert Sir John Curtice told LBC he expects parties other than the two major ones to have a record number of MPs in the upcoming General Election.

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Posted in News | 61 Comments
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