Although the party consolidated our voter base in areas such as Surrey, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire at the local elections, something which stuck out to me was the way that despite the best efforts of all our amazing hard-working volunteers, the party lost ground in Labour-facing urban areas such as Manchester and Sheffield as a result of being leapfrogged by the Green Party and I think part of the reason for this leads back to the Gorton and Denton by-election.
At a Q&A back in March, current Lib Dem leader Ed Davey was asked about the by-election, “wasn’t it the sort of seat we should be in contention in, the sort of seat we should be trying to win?” His response was the following: “We didn’t try because we knew we weren’t in contention to beat Reform… but what we do do though is where we think we can win, we put the resources in.”
I think this explanation was a massive middle finger to the Manchester Liberal Democrats from the leadership and I’m going to explain why I think the decision from the leadership to not give them a helping hand in Gorton and Denton was a massive mistake that proved detrimental to similar Labour-facing areas in the local elections.
The Manchester Liberal Democrats were placed in a very difficult position where they worked their arses off with what they could, like they always do and to say that ‘we didn’t try’ is such a disservice to them, because they did try, they tried their hardest to support Jackie and be a proud liberal voice for the people of Gorton and Denton – but what more could they have possibly done when they had no support from the leadership?
The leadership often complains about a lack of media coverage but I would argue the current approach is a factor in this because what is the point of us as a party if we see a high-profile Labour-facing by-election with an illiberal candidate like Matt Goodwin in contention and we have absolutely nothing to say about it? All because it happened to be in a seat we didn’t ‘stand a chance of winning’ in?
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