Tag Archives: north of england

In our internal federal elections for 2026, Josh Babarinde and Victoria Collins were elected as our President and Vice President respectively. I wish Mr Babarinde and Ms Collins the best of luck ahead of their tenures as their successes are our party’s successes.

In light of their victories, there is an issue facing our party which we need to address. Kamran Hussain, Ms Collins’ challenger for VP, stood as a candidate who would give the North of England a greater voice within the federal party. That is why I and members of my local and regional parties, among others in the North, supported Mr Hussain’s VP candidacy, and why I supported the Federal Policy Committee candidacies of Abrial Jerram and Andrew Haldane.

At present, our party is dominated by the South of England. Of our 72 MPs, nearly 82% represent Southern seats, with most senior party positions being held by MPs from this region. By contrast, the North of England has only four Lib Dem MPs, with the Northeast having none. While Lisa Smart, Tim Farron and Tom Morrison hold posts in the frontbench team, this continuing imbalance may portray us as a party of and for the South and put us bad stead electorally.

The North of England feels left behind in comparison to the rest of the United Kingdom. Yorkshire and Humberside and the Northeast are in the lowest third of English regions by GDP, with the former having a smaller GDP than the Southwest of England or Scotland despite all three having comparable populations (around 5,000,000 each). The North has rates of unemployment higher than the UK average and worse rates of poverty, deprivation, growth and investment than the South.

The North formed part of Labour’s Red Wall, but recent elections have demonstrated that Northern fealty to Labour is no longer a given. In 2019, the Red Wall collapsed to the Conservatives partly in rejection of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, with many seats in the region reverting to Labour in 2024 owing to vote-splitting by Reform UK. This year’s local elections were a clear rejection of the two-party status quo. While our party’s gains were concentrated in the South due to the continuation of our Blue Wall strategy, Reform’s were principally in the Midlands and North, with those in the latter including the councils of Lancashire, Doncaster and County Durham.

Reform’s performance in local government since May have been mixed. They have lost 38 councillors through resignation, defection, suspension or expulsion. Quarrels within Reform’s ranks have broken out. Spending has either been wasted through payouts for contract violations or cuts to vital maintenance works. Cases of ‘good’ Reform governance, such as Kent County Council’s call for more social care visas or Hull & East Yorkshire Mayor Luke Campbell’s support for his county’s renewables industry, saw breaks with party principles and emulation of the ‘establishment’ that they were meant to rail against.

Reform UK are not winning because of their policies but because of anger against the two major parties and their recent poor records in government. While we are picking up seats through by-elections following short-lived Reform stints in local government, we cannot rest on our laurels and assume that a lack of a plan will doom them by the time of the next general election.

Our policies of lowering prices, improving public services and investing in infrastructure theoretically have appeal in the North. However, we are not cutting through to voters, at least nationally. We must acknowledge that our policies do not address the specific needs of specific regions or communities, and we must recognise that Northern concerns are not purely economic in nature.

Viewed as a party of the South, we may by extension be viewed as a party of and for the middle class. Of the Northern seats we have won, they are usually centred on more affluent towns reminiscent of the Blue Wall, namely Harrogate & Knaresborough located within Yorkshire’s Golden Triangle. Having first seen the decline of heavy manufacturing which provided plentiful, proud work for unskilled and semiskilled workers, the boarding-up of high street and town centre businesses clearly marks another decline where fewer jobs are available. The university-level education now required in the modern job market is unaffordable or inaccessible to many and may be perceived as having little immediate benefit to afflicted communities. Within such environments, populist, anti-establishment parties calling for a return to ‘better times’ would have greater appeal.