Tag Archives: northern liberalism

Post 2017 Northern Liberalism – Part 3

By Ed Thornley | Tue 17th October 2017 - 1:55 pm

As promised, the last part (Part 1 here, part 2 here) of my foray into political analysis will look at how we move forward in an area of the UK where we kept less than deposits in June of this year. Central to this is, I believe, the strategy suggested by Mark Pack and David Howarth of creating a core vote. However, this is clearly a long-term strategy, and I want to look at the more immediate future.

It is because of our current situation that I welcome the appointment of Tim Farron as our new spokesperson for the North of England. It’s a logical place for him to be, proud as he clearly is of his Preston upbringing. I also think it is a great opportunity for Tim to get back to what he does best, rallying the troops. With all the important local elections coming up, our members really do need that drive. A good first step would be for us to denounce the Northern Powerhouse for the complete fudge that it is, and to scream it from the rooftops. Fractional funding increases in real terms does not constitute a powerhouse anywhere. We should also continue to speak out on the pointlessness of the new City Region Mayors, whose only success that I can see is to get flip-flop Burnham out of the Commons. I was very happy to hear Carl Cashman say that the first thing he would do if elected in the Liverpool City Region would be to have a referendum on his new position – because why on earth does Liverpool need three mayors?

Having mentioned Tim, I feel it is worth reiterating what is for me the defining message of his leadership, pick a ward and win it. We used to run a dozen councils in the North, but now it’s just South Lakeland. If we are to gain Parliamentary seats, we must gain council seats, it’s a very simple and uncontroversial truth. Council elections are always effected by national opinion, there’s no way around that, so we fall back on a record of local delivery, on Labour’s incompetence and the cruelty of the Conservatives. It will be an uphill battle, in some places it’ll be impossible for now. So we must focus our resources on winnable areas, not fritter them in hopeless contests. A strong organisation is also central, such as that now delivering impressive results in Sheffield. The ability of the Sheffield party to co-ordinate and focus their efforts to specific areas across the city is what made the win in Mosborough and the solid swing in Beighton last week possible.

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Post 2017 Northern Liberalism Part 2

By Ed Thornley | Fri 13th October 2017 - 11:55 am

A few days ago, I wrote Part 1 of this article, at the time intended to be the one and only part, but the response in comments and in person has, I feel, required a deeper look into the situation we face in the North of England post-GE2017, in particular the areas that I know well, and provide some of the more interesting case studies. Part 2 looks at the General Election of June, and Part 3 will look into how we move forward.

Southport has always been interesting, staying orange in 2015 when everyone thought it would go blue, a spot of council strength that defies logic in a town with similar demographics to Clacton. On 12^th June this year, John Pugh wrote an article entitled “How we lost Southport” on this site, and I hope he will not mind me using that work as a reference point here. In it he clearly pins down the reason he believes we fell into third place – national messaging. I should at this point say that this is not a three-months-too-late national campaign bashing article, the 2017 General Election was a surprise one, fought furiously by all of us. Yet, we are now far enough away to look back with a level of objectivity. Our national messaging was quite simple – Tories want a hard Brexit, Labour can’t win anyway because of Corbyn. Simple, but not effective. It fell particularly flat in the least well-off regions of the country, the North of course.

Attacking Corbyn may well have gone down in attempts to steal votes from naturally conservative voters, but in the constituency in which I now live, Leeds North West, we found dozens of national leaflets attacking the blessed Jeremy landing on doormats in Labour-leaning areas, prompting a backlash against us. Whether the requests for this to stop were eventually listened to or not I don’t know, but they kept coming, and this has made two things clear to me. Firstly, that our national messaging wasn’t right in 2017 and secondly, and more importantly, that as a national party we do not listen enough to those who know best, in this case the campaigners and councillors on the ground, who unanimously saw these leaflets for the messaging disaster they were for the wards we were already struggling in most.