Tag Archives: party president

Mark Pack’s report to Members

Thank you and good luck

Due to an impressive collective effort, our candidate tally for this May’s elections is our best showing since May 2009. That is, the proportion of seats we are contesting this time, compared with the proportion Labour and the Conservatives are contesting, is the best since before the 2010 Coalition government.

We still have more progress to go to get to matching their numbers of candidates, but this year is another important step forward. It shows a continuing spread of our grassroots campaign efforts beyond simply our held and target Westminster constituencies.

Thank you to everyone who has played a part in that, especially those standing for the first time this May and the many agents who have taken on agenting for extra candidates.

A particular shout out to the team in County Durham, where we are standing at least one candidate in every ward across the whole council for the first time ever, ensuring that there is a Lib Dem alternative to Labour, Reform and the Conservatives in every single community.

If we can also go on to make net seat gains in the local elections that will make it seven rounds of net gains in a row – again an important spreading of our grassroots strength, and the longest run of such gains since the 1980s. Even more importantly, it will mean more Liberal Democrats in office, able to implement more of our policies in order to make people’s lives better.

In a neat demonstration of both these points – the importance of putting up candidates and of winning more political power to improve people’s lives – we already have the first Liberal Democrat council gain in. It is Melksham Town Council, guaranteed to have a new Lib Dem majority after not enough other candidates got nominated.

Lib Dems secure limits on emergency new government powers

While supporting the government’s emergency legislation to safeguard the Scunthorpe steel works, the Lib Dems successfully pressed in Parliament for important safeguards on the use of the emergency powers the law grants the government.

In the Commons, Daisy Cooper secured a promise from the relevant minister that, “the powers that he is giving himself will be repealed as soon as possible, within six months at the latest, and if they are still required after that, whether he will come back to this House to ask for another vote”.

Following up on that in the Lords, Chris Fox got an assurance from the relevant government minister that the powers granted in the bill would be debated in six months in a substantive motion that will be voted on – further locking the government into allowing Parliament to have a say in their continuation or cessation.

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Mark Pack’s Monthly Report to members

Our electoral system cannot cope

Securing 30% of the vote in a general election used to be a general election losing vote share for Labour or the Conservatives. But it is now quite possible that the winner of the next Westminster general election will not top 30%, and that we will have four political parties within 10-15 points of each other. First past the post is really not designed for that…

This comes with two important implications for ourselves. One is the continuing importance of local elections, both in their own right and also as a way of establishing credibility for Westminster Parliament (and indeed Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd, along with Mayor) contests. Even if we finished a long way back on vote share in the previous election, gains at local election level can put us in the race – and show voters that we are in the race.

The other is the continuing importance of bar charts. Tactical voting was not just a one-off to remove the Conservatives from 10 Downing Street last year. As we have seen in council by-elections since last summer, it continues to be important – just as it continued to be so after the 1997 Conservative landslide defeat too. (In fact, anti-Conservative tactical voting was still a big factor in 2005, two general elections and one Iraq war on from 1997.)

So don’t mothball those bar chart templates quite yet.

Speaking of bar charts, here is one that shows how impressively our local campaign teams over-perform in council by-elections:

Federal Conference…

Many thanks to everyone involved in putting on such a well-run Federal Conference in Harrogate. Another impressive team effort by staff and volunteers!

Among the important measures passed were F9, Free to be who you are, which reaffirmed our support for trans rights and F10, about reforming our Parliamentary candidate process. This reached the two-thirds majority required (it looked like it passed about 80%-20%) and so now moves to the stage of state party approval.

I know it is an issue which raised many passions, and people were particularly heartfelt about the need for consultation – an important point for us all as we move on to the next stage.

Much of the debate focused on the two-thirds of constituencies which did not get to select their own candidate in the last Parliament. Helping more of them select, and in enough time to train and support their candidates, is an important task for this Parliament. Helping more of our non-target seats get candidates in place sooner, and then properly supporting and training those candidates, could be a massive step change in how we spread the breadth of our success across the country.

Conference also ratified the new set of election regulations for our big internal elections due this autumn (timetable here). The Board has also reappointed David Crowther to a new three year term as Federal Returning Officer.

If you did not make it to Conference – or did but want to relive any of the moments – you can watch again on the party’s YouTube channel.

Extra thanks to Jeremy Hargreaves, Nicholas da Costa and Daisy Cooper for kindly stepping in to cover things for me after I had to miss the event due to a bout of ill health.

See you all in Bournemouth in September!

Our fabulous Party Awards winners

Harrogate also saw our latest round of Party Awards, with a fabulous quartet of colleagues having their contributions recognised:

Albert Ingham Award

Named in honour of one of our party’s election agent greats, this award goes to Ed Thornley for his work on a cracking by-election win in Edinburgh in November. Thanks to Ed’s dedication, skill and commitment over five long months, we started in fourth place on 12% of the vote and ended up with more than treble that – with nearly double the vote of the second place candidate.

Bertha Bowness Fischer Award

This award is named after the pioneering female Liberal election agent and this time is awarded to someone who has already made their mark despite only recently joining us – Lou Timlin. Lou joined in 2023 but has already been a campaigner, diversity officer, Fleet super user, press officer and elected a councillor too. Following someone’s bereavement, she even stepped in at no notice to be agent in Wokingham for the general election – helping us win the seat on a 19% swing.

Laura Grimond Award

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Mark Pack’s February Report: Looking forward to Harrogate

Federal Conference is nearly here

It is fabulous we are not only returning to Harrogate for a Liberal Democrat conference, but that now it is also a venue with a Liberal Democrat MP, following Tom Gordon’s win last July.

The very first winning general election campaign I worked on was that for Phil Willis, also in Harrogate, back in 1997. Back then, we all thought the 1997 election result across the country was a cracking one for our party, winning 46 seats. But we far surpassed that in 2024. People will still smile while saying ‘72’ for a good while yet.

But elections keep on coming, and we have a great opportunity with the May local elections – or rather, the reduced number of them after Labour and the Conservatives decided that democracy is inconvenient when changes are coming to local government.

Even with the reduction in elections, they are still a great opportunity to strengthen our position in the constituencies we won last year, and a great opportunity to build up our strength more broadly too.

For all the damage done to local government by years of cuts and centralisation, billions of pounds in public services will be at stake in the May elections as local government is still at the heart of so many crucial services.

Which makes these elections important not only for our future growth as a party, but also for our immediate power to turn our policies into action to improve people’s lives.

Policies that we will be updating and refreshing at our Federal Conference for the new political landscape we are in. Alongside that we will have the opportunity to discuss lessons from the general election, along with excellent training, a variety of fringes and stalls and much catching up with colleagues from around the country.

Whether by coming in person, or joining online, I hope you join other members by taking part in our Harrogate Conference.

The Agenda and Directory are up on the party website, as is the Federal Board report to Conference, which is in the Reports to Conference booklet.

That Board report includes explanations of the two items of business the Board is proposing in addition to our report: updates to our election regulations, primarily in response to the recommendations of the review carried out by Nick Manners, and a very short constitutional amendment regarding Liberal Democrats Ltd.

Party strategy

Harrogate Conference will also include a consultation session as part of evolving our strategy for the new circumstances of this Westminster Parliamentary cycle. The Board has produced a short note to help give that session some context, which you can read via the party website. If you are not able to make the session, you can also send in comments via [email protected].

Harrogate will also see a presentation from the General Election Review, another important input into our plans for this cycle. The report is available to read here.

Measuring success

If there were media outlets as keen to talk up the Liberal Democrats as some are to talk up Reform, then we would be hearing a lot about how Lib Dem support has surged to increase by half. That is because so far in this Parliament, we are averaging 12% in the polls, compared with 8% for the same period in the last Parliament.

While the increase may cause us quiet satisfaction, and the absence of media coverage for it quiet frustration, the most important point about the increase is that it shows one of our key assumptions for the 2024 general election playing out. That is, that national vote share is – in the current set of circumstances – a consequence of success rather than a cause of success.

In other words, we managed a history-breaking seat haul alongside a small increase in our vote share because, under first past the post, national vote share is only very weakly correlated with success for a party like ours. Hence 2024 (72 seats) was a triumph while 1983 (23 seats) was not, even though the Alliance’s vote share in 1983 was just over double ours in 2024.

Remembering to focus on winning under the political system in front of us served us well in the last Westminster Parliamentary cycle, and it will do so again in this.

Internal election news

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Mark Pack’s January report to members

Farage and Musk are the past, not the future

Seeing someone called a “snivelling cretin” may reinforce all your worst fears about social media. But when it was Elon Musk saying this of Ed Davey, it counts as a badge of honour.

It also illustrates a bigger, and more important, point than ‘look how thin skinned and short of things to say a billionaire is when anyone stands up to him’.

It is about how little to say about our future the likes of Nigel Farage and Elon Musk have beyond nostalgia for an imagined version of our past. For all Elon Musk’s facade as a visionary man of the future, much of his vision is a shrunken, twisted piece of fake nostalgia: a world where the super-rich get to run things, democracy is an optional extra, international borders are high and only his favoured few select demographic categories are worthy people.

Their joint desire to turn the clock backwards is in contrast to our positive liberal vision for a better future. Just because someone is not like me is not a reason to dislike them. Just because someone has different views of religion than me is not a reason to fear them. And just because someone lives in a different country from me is not a reason to treat them as an enemy.

The likes of Farage and Musk excel at grabbing the headlines, but the quiet reality of 2024 was a year in which in Britain us Liberal Democrats took more political power. We won more council seats than the Conservatives and Reform combined in May – and then we had our best general election result in a century, gaining far more seats than Reform, in July.

General Election Review

An important part of building on those successes is our General Election Review, which was headed up by Tim Farron.

Thank you to Tim and the whole team for turning around the review promptly, so that we can get stuck into implementing its lessons as soon as practical in this Parliamentary cycle.

As with the post-2019 review, this one has been shared with all party members because, even though this review is a happier one, it is important once again that members can hold to account those in power at all levels of the party on delivering the review’s recommendations. As Tim explained in the email to members, there are some further recommendations on membership to follow.

The review is asking Federal Conference Committee (FCC) for time to present their findings to our Federal Spring Conference in Harrogate. Alongside that, the Federal Board has agreed to draw up an implementation plan for the recommendations, and you will get more news on that through these monthly reports.

Party Awards

Our Spring Federal Conference in Harrogate is now coming up fast. Which also means it is time to nominate wonderful colleagues for our next round of Party Awards too.

You can read about which awards are up this time, and how to make nominations, here.

Registrations for conference, both in person and online, are also open. I hope to see many of you there.

Congratulations to…

North Devon Liberal Democrats were the top recruiting local party in England in December, topping the charts for the second month running. All but one of the new members were recruited locally by them – giving the party’s local bank balance a handy boost too as local parties receive larger membership payments for locally recruited (or renewed) members.

Congratulations too to the top local recruiters in Scotland – Dumfriesshire and Highlands local parties, tied with each other – and in Wales – Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan.

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Mark Pack’s December report: Beating Labour and seeing off Reform in Sheffield

Happy Christmas and New Year

Once again, we end the year with more Liberal Democrat MPs, more Liberal Democrat council leaders and more Liberal Democrat councillors than we started the year. We also have in Ed Davey the main party leader who consistently comes out best in the polls.

You have already heard many statistics from myself and others about that progress, so this time I will simply share perhaps my favourite. There are now 25 Liberal Democrat MPs with a majority over 10,000… and just 5 (!) Conservatives.

That is a huge tribute to the personal vote built up by so many of our campaigners, supported by people’s kind collective efforts across the party … and a sign of just how much political trouble the Conservatives are still in. Trouble that Labour has been remarkably quick to run into too. It is impressive how many Liberal Democrat campaigners have been out in the cold and rain, winning council by-elections and building support with campaigns on topics such as the Winter Fuel Allowance.

Willis Marshall’s dramatic win for us in Sheffield recently captured much of the current state of our politics. A cracking Lib Dem campaign and candidate, scoring a 27% vote share increase to take a seat off the Labour Party in an area where we had not won before – and in the process, seeing off Reform – who surged up into second place – by just 10 votes, while the Conservative vote fell by three-quarters. In other words – our areas of success spreading, holding Labour to account and winning ourselves, rather than leaving the political space for the populists to fill.

Such successes are only possible thanks to the generous combined efforts of our members, staff, donors and volunteers. A deep thank you to everyone who has contributed to our successes this year, and the very best of luck for the challenges to come next year. But before that, I hope everyone gets a good break over Christmas and New Year.

Next steps in the party’s strategy

Work is starting on developing our new strategy for this Westminster Parliamentary cycle. How do we build on our success in electing 72 MPs this July and making gains in every round of local elections in the last Parliament? How do we spread our success more widely? And what do we need to change about how we operate to achieve that?

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Mark Pack’s November 2024 report: A guaranteed way to lose votes

The importance of next May

A blessing and a curse of a democracy is that elections keep on coming around. So while this year has been an exhausting one of election campaigns already, we also need to be turning our eyes to the local elections coming up in May.

Most of the seats up in May were last contested when the Conservatives were still on an electoral high back in 2021. Therefore they provide us with an important opportunity to follow up on our major gains from the Conservatives at both local and Westminster level since 2021. They also provide us with an important opportunity to continue to grow our strength more broadly, especially in areas where, now with a Labour government in Westminster, new possibilities are opening up.

But there is one sure-fire, 100% guaranteed, rock-solid way of repelling voters from us, and it is one we use far too often.

It is not having a Liberal Democrat on the ballot paper. Zero votes for the party guaranteed.

Both Labour and the Conservatives, for example, get very close now to having a full slate of candidates in local elections. We do not.

The good news is that since in the last Parliament we have collectively started focusing on really raising our candidate numbers in council contests, we have made good progress, both for by-elections and for the May rounds of elections.

Standing candidates is not only about credibility and relevance. It is also the way to get more people into the habit of regularly voting for the Liberal Democrats – a crucial step in building the sort of larger core vote for the party that will help us succeed more often.

With us having regained our third place in the House of Commons, continuing that progress in candidate numbers to help further establish ourselves is even more important next May.

If you have local elections coming up in your area, there are great training materials and supporting documents on how to increase your candidate numbers, and how to run a proper approval process. Drop me a line if you need help finding the support you need.

Good luck!

A 15th century technology still reigns supreme

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Mark Pack’s August report: The new political landscape

The new political landscape

We can – and should and will – continue to celebrate our general election result, and to thank everyone who contributed to it, for a good while yet. As people catch breath after those huge efforts, we also need to start to look to the future political landscape.

We have a mandate from the millions of people who voted for us, we need to work to deliver that mandate. But what difference to that task will the new political landscape make?

That is the question we need to collectively address as we develop our plans for this Parliament.

As we do so, there is an important lesson to bear in mind. It is perhaps the most salutary lesson for anyone involved in politics, particularly in a party in opposition. It comes from looking at the long-run data series from pollsters Ipsos (formerly MORI) asking people which issues are most important to them and to the country.

It is both electorally wise – and fundamentally liberal – to pay attention to what people say matters most to them. We are not paternalists who think we know what is best for others, we are liberals who believe people know best for themselves.

As the Ipsos series uses an open ended question, and so caters for changing terminology and focus over the years (e.g. from European Community to EEC to European Union to Brexit), it provides a good insight into how and when the public’s concerns change.

The salutary lesson? You can certainly see people’s concerns change as events happen, such as rising inflation driving cost of living concerns up. You can also, to a degree, see the impact that a sustained focus on a policy area by the government can make, such as – although spectacularly unsuccessfully as their landslide defeat showed – by the last Conservative government on immigration.

But for the main opposition party, let alone for a smaller one? It is very hard to spot much scope to shift the public’s agenda. Rather, the real political skill comes from leaning into that reality, instead finding the overlap between a party’s values and the public’s interests – and concentrating on that.

It is what we did so successfully in the last Parliament, focusing in particular on health and social care and on the cost of living.

It is also why we need to be open-minded, and ready to be flexible, about how that issues landscape will change during this new Parliament. How long the government’s (limited) political honeymoon will last, how the next leader of the opposition performs and how events influence what matters most to people: those will all set the landscape in which we then need to find the best route to continue to grow and win more elections.

Which means that this early in the Parliament the important strategic issues for the party are about how we deliver the mandate on which our MPs were elected, and how to keep our options beyond that open as we see the new landscape develop – and how to continue to grow our grassroots organisation so that we can make the most of the opportunities that will come.

A change of Prime Minister in Downing Street has not taken away the rationale for concentrating on NHS and social care, the cost of living and sewage in particular. Those are all challenges that still need addressing. Our MPs got elected on that platform: they both have a mandate for action on that platform – and it is important that we show voters that those are the issues we still care about.

Plus of course health, and social care in particular, are the issues that Ed Davey is closely associated with, has expertise in and were at the heart of his and our general election message.

The gains at that general election in our target seats were only the most eye-catching part of growing our grassroots strength. Alongside that we made gains on a much broader scale in local elections through the last Parliament, making net gains in fact in every round of local elections and now running more councils with a Lib Dem majority than before we went into coalition in 2010.

With a Labour government now in Westminster, and so many of our second places at general elections now first places leaving us with relatively few second placed seats, it is a new set of challenges to keep that growth going over the next five years.

But as we have shown in the last five, when we set our minds to it, we can achieve so much together.

General election review

One important post-election task for the Board is setting up a general election review. This should be a happier affair than our 2019 review, but it is still important.

Much of our success in the last Westminster Parliament came from our willingness to learn from what had and had not worked for the party in 2019, and to change as a result. It would be foolish and complacent to assume that we have now maxed out all the progress we can make. We need to discover our next set of lessons, which is where this review comes in.

The review is being chaired by Tim Farron and the other members of the review team are Ade Adeyemo, Paul Farthing , Donna Harris, Emma Holland-Lindsay, Mike O’Carroll and Sally Pattle. The team brings extensive experience from different perspectives, and is also made up of people who were not key decision makers on the campaign itself, so that they can properly evaluate – and hold to account – those who were.

The review has been asked to report by the end of the year, so that if there are any recommendations that need to come to Conference they can be submitted for Spring next year (subject of course to Federal Conference Committee’s decisions on the agenda). Thank you also to FCC for providing time at the Autumn Conference for the review to get feedback.

This timetable combines the need to have enough time to do a proper review, consulting with members, with moving quickly enough that related important decisions, such as over target seats, do not get unduly delayed in this Parliament.

Watch out for opportunities to submit your views to the review, including at our Autumn Federal Conference in Brighton.

Financial plans

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Mark Pack’s monthly report: This is what you did

Thank you

From our low of 6 seats in 1959 through to our then peak of 63 in 2006, gaining 57 seats took 47 years. We’ve now gained 61 seats in just 5 years. It was an amazing team achievement, and we all should be proud of the roles we have played.

Perhaps the most amazing helper is our kind deliverer Geoff, who both campaigned locally and in a target seat, a mere 79 years(!) after he delivered his first leaflet as a very young deliverer in the 1945 general election.

Whether it was your first or your twenty-second general election, and whether you helped with leaflets, canvassing, money or in one of many other ways, thank you.

This is what you did:

A particular thanks too to those who worked so hard on campaigns that did not quite make it this time. Just missing out is always frustrating, and all the more so when so many others around you are celebrating. I hope though our other successes can give you hope that success will come in your area too in the years to come.

What happened

That photograph did not happen by accident. Although Rishi Sunak, and before him Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, gave us a helping hand, it was a result we created – deliberately, following a plan all through the Parliament.

We did so by breaking all previous records for the effectiveness of targeting.

Nor was this just due to split opposition votes, because the Lib Dem vote share in the seats we won was impressively high, as Patrick Dunleavy’s figures show:

1983 was the high point of the Alliance and previous attempts to break the two-party system in Westminster. Compared to then, we secured half the votes this time – but three times as many seats. In a political system where the currency of success is seats, that is quite the success.

Of course, the national campaign had an important part in that too. It was a national campaign focused on the voters and media outlets that most mattered for winning seats, and which caught the public’s imagination:

That image captures one of the important lessons from our 2019 election review: the importance of strong visual images to cut through a crowded media landscape and to reach a public often not that interested in the details of politics.

Though I suspect none of that review team – whose work was essential to guiding our work through the last Parliament – quite foresaw what visual images would be coming…

The response from voters came through clearly in the polls:

How it happened

There will be more lessons to digest as there is more time to hear feedback and analyse the evidence, both of what worked well and of what areas we need to work on for next time.

The broad picture though has some clear features. Success came from:

  1. Concentrating on the issues that mattered most to voters;
  2. Building strong teams in our most promising areas;
  3. Explicitly targeting seat numbers rather than vote share – aiming to win seats where we could and to build up our organisational strength elsewhere;
  4. Investing early in intensive support for our candidates and campaigners in our most promising areas;
  5. Taking each round of elections seriously, with each important in its own right but also as a building block for the next too; and
  6. Working together as one team, following a collective strategy based on what you, party members, decided at our conference.

That comes through in the reasons people gave pollster More in Common for voting Liberal Democrat:

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Mark Pack: How we decide to ask people where to campaign

Why it matters

A stark fact from this May’s local elections: just 97 more people switching from our opponents to us would have given us outright control of three more local councils.
That is the brutal reality of first past the post elections. Votes in the key places count for much more than votes in safe seats and in lost causes.

It is why we want to get rid of first past the post. To do that, we first have to win under first past the post. That means concentrating our efforts where they can make the most difference to how many seats we win.

Asking people to help in the right places

Having people from other areas come to help them is a key part of any successful target seat campaign at a general election. It is also the best way to value and respect people’s time – by directing it to where it will have the most impact.

But asking people to go to the right places is not straightforward and it is something we did not get right in 2019. So here is how we are approaching the task this time around.

Running through all this is a simple dilemma. For five general elections in a row, the party has been too optimistic about how many seats it was sensible to target (and although there was rightly lots of wisdom after the event, much of the pressure internally from members during each of those campaigns was to be more optimistic, not less).

Yet the Conservatives, our main opponents in our target seats, are currently polling at a level which, if reflected on polling day, will see them get their worst result since the roll out of letterboxes.

To guide the campaign through this, a wide range of sources of information therefore is being used: what the results on the new boundaries would have been in 2019, local election and devolved bodies election results since then, all the public MRPs published (more than 10 already!) with their seat-by-seat figures, our own private polling and of course the data coming in from our canvassers on the doors and phones.

As well as using all those sources of information to get a balanced overall view of our best prospects, we then have to divide up possible help sensibly. Each target seat is allocated a number of other constituencies where members and supporters are asked to help them.

Because we have to balance the amount of help to each place accordingly – and because of course transport options and travel times vary depending on where in a constituency you live or work – this sometimes means that the seat people are being asked to help is not the nearest or quickest to get to.

If there is another seat you would like to head to because it is easier to get to, because a group of friends are also campaigning there or to return some favours for previous help in a local election, by all means drop an email to [email protected] and the team can confirm if it is indeed a seat we are in with a serious chance of winning and encouraging people to go to.

If you cannot make it in person, help on the phones is also very valuable. You can sign up for our group phoning sessions here or again email [email protected] to be put in touch with the local team in a target seat who can give you details of who to phone.

Building our capacity

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Mark Pack’s April report – What does a successful Westminster general election campaign look like?

Seats… and capacity

We may not yet know when the date of the Westminster general election will be. But we do know what success will look like.

For older readers, please think of 1983. For younger readers, please think of 2019. Neither of these Westminster general elections are remembered as a triumph for us or our predecessors. In 1983 we got 25% of the vote… but only 23 seats. In 2019, our vote share went up by a chunky 4%… but our seat tally fell by 1.

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The Party President on our long term plan

Mark Pack’s report for February:

A familiar trio

By now, you’re most likely very familiar with the idea that we are concentrating our campaigning for the next Westminster general election on the NHS, the cost of living and sewage. You may well have heard that on Zoom calls with our Chief Executive, seen it in leaflets you’ve delivered or said it yourself in conversations with voters.

The prime reason for this trio is the humility that’s essential for a political party in an electoral democracy: the humility to listen to voters and to take their concerns as the starting point of our …

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Mark Pack’s October report – let’s make it 5 in a row

You know what would be even better than four record book rewriting Parliamentary by-election wins in a row? Five.

That’s the opportunity we have with the Mid Bedfordshire by-election and our great candidate, Emma Holland-Lindsay. The issues that are big on the doorsteps are ones that will be familiar to us from campaigning all around the country – people feeling taken for granted by the Conservatives, worried about the cost of living and angry about the state of the NHS. And they think sewage should be sent to treatment plants rather than into our rivers and onto our beaches.

Polling day is 19 October and it’s absolutely one of those contests where people on the ground, talking to voters and visiting their letterboxes, will determine the outcome. It might have been a rock solid safe Conservative seat in the past, but no more!

What Have the Liberals Ever Done For Us?

That’s the title of an excellent new publication from the Liberal Democrat History Group. It comes with a preface by Ed Davey in which he says, “When you need to put your feet up after door-knocking, or to energise yourself for the next delivery round, read it to remember what we stand for and what we have done with the votes that people have lent us – and be inspired to campaign for even greater achievements in the future.”

More information about the new booklet is here and you can watch the launch event with Layla Moran, Sarah Olney, Wendy Chamberlain and Liz Barker here.

Bournemouth Conference

Many thanks to everyone who helped make such a success of our autumn conference, especially everyone who has contributed to our pre-manifesto, For A Fair Deal. That now gives us both a clear up-to-date prospectus of our overall policies and also (in the second chapter) sets our clearly our vision for the country.

If you missed out on our conference – or want to relive moments of it – you can (re)watch all the action on our website.

Conference kindly agreed the Board report, confirming the appointment of Tom Hood to the Federal Appeals Panel (FAP), and also passed our motion on the party’s finances for the next year. This froze our minimum membership subscriptions in recognition of the cost of living crisis and also included an agreed settlement with our three state parties on our mutual financial positions.

Answers to questions for the Board that were not taken in person at Bournemouth due to the time limits will appear on the party website as part of the conference reporting.

Our Party Awards winners

One of the best parts of the President’s role at our conferences is handing out our Party Awards to recognise the work of amazing colleagues around the country.

Our Bournemouth winners were:

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President’s Update: The difference your campaigning makes

So many people depend on the help and love of unpaid carers, relying on them to get through essential day-to-day challenges such as washing, dressing and eating. Yet our unpaid carers are often without adequate support, having to juggle caring with their own work.

Which is why Wendy Chamberlain’s Carer’s Leave Act, steered through the Lords by Lib Dem peer Chris Fox, is such an impressive and important achievement. A special shout-out too for Wendy’s Senior Researcher, Kathryn Sturgeon, who did a power of work on the bill.

It’s an impressive achievement because the chance for any MP outside the government to get new legislation through is rare. It’s also an important achievement because the Act gives important new support to carers, allowing time off work to manage caring responsibilities.

The Act means an estimated 2.4 million carers across the UK now have a statutory right to take five days of unpaid leave per year. The law benefits employers too as those businesses which already provide such leave report reduced recruitment costs, improved retention and better staff well-being.

Wendy seized the opportunity when it came. But she was only there in Parliament to see the opportunity because of your support and campaigning. It’s the difference that getting Liberal Democrats elected makes. Thank you.

Condolences

I know readers will want to join me in giving our condolences to Ming Campbell, after his wife Elspeth died earlier this month. As Wendy Chamberlain said, “Elspeth was a kind and generous person, known to and loved by many of us within the Scottish Liberal Democrats in North East Fife and beyond. I will treasure the memory of the time I spent with her both prior to and since my election.

Could it be you?

Five keen and talented people are needed for a variety of roles in the Federal Party, ranging from membership and supporter work to finance and judging appeals.

Even if you’re not looking for a new role, please do take a look as you may well know someone else who it would be worth you sharing this information with and encouraging to apply.

Details are up on our website for:

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Mark Pack: My monthly report to members

We have a chance this May to achieve something we’ve only ever managed twice before in our party’s entire history: make it five rounds of local election net gains in a row.

We should be excited about that possibility. Not only for reasons of psephology but also for reasons of power.

Every gain we make will mean more people benefiting from Liberal Democrats in office, and every gain we make will mean more opportunity to turn our policies into action.

Policies such as the great record in Eastleigh of building new houses – and keeping on winning elections.

To keep our run of local election gains going in May we need two things: candidates and teams to help them. The last time this round of seats were up for election, our calculations show that we missed out on several hundred (yes, hundred) further gains because we didn’t have enough candidates in winnable territory.

Centrally, the party is doing more to publicise the opportunities to be a candidate and to encourage more people to think about i., (The data from these surveys ends up in Lighthouse so it’s available to all local parties.)

But nothing quite beats the in person conversation, the chat over coffee, to help more people realise what a great candidate and councillor they would be. 

That’s particularly important for potential candidates for under-represented groups, who can need that extra encouragement that our party is a welcoming home for them.

Then we need to get our candidates elected, which is where help from people who don’t have local elections in their own area can be so important. Going to help in person or picking up the phone to make some calls makes the difference in close contests.

If you can help with either of these tasks, please do. There’s also a wide range of free training available to help you make the most of these opportunities.

Working together, we can get more Liberal Democrats elected and get more things done such as turning a disused rubbish tip bequeathed by a Conservative-run council into a successful solar farm, helping our planet and generating income to pay for high quality local services.

The paradox at the heart of British politics

Alongside that local picture, there’s a paradox in our national politics we also need to navigate our way through.

The public increasingly views Brexit negatively. The headline figures show a slow but sustained, long-term trend.

Some of this change comes from long-term demographic trends as those joining the adult population are overall much more pro-European than the average. Some of it too comes from people changing their minds – although much of that is a churn to/from don’t know.

In fact, when YouGov recently asked about how people would vote in a new referendum, there was only a net 1.5% of people switching direct all the way from Leave to Remain. Moreover, those increasing pro-European views are also often quite soft. Put simply, the more that the possible conditions of Britain rejoining the EU are mentioned, the further support drops.

Even so, the overall trends are clearly headed in the right direction given our pro-Europeanism. Yet there is a paradox here. Because while public opinion is increasingly negative about Brexit, public opinion is even more strongly of the view that the most important issues to people, their families and to the country are other topics.

Different pollsters ask these questions in different ways, but the pattern of answers is similar. That pattern matters because, as the last general election showed, however much we might wish the election to be about one issue, in a democracy the voters get to choose what an election is about – and they can choose to make it about something else.

Today the most important issues are the economy, cost of living and health services. These affect people directly, now, in very practical and obvious ways.

Many people face big waits for a GP appointment, can’t get on an NHS dentist waiting list, worry about ambulance times if things do go wrong, and millions are stuck on waiting lists.

Overwhelmingly, the public wants to hear those who seek to lead them concentrating on these issues. Talking about other issues instead can feel at best like missing the point and at worst disrespectful to the immediate pressures and worries they face.

The way to show these voters we understand their lives is to talk about the economy, the NHS, practical issues in their area affecting their lives, and the underlying sense of being taken for granted by the Conservatives.

Party Awards: get your nominations in

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Mark Pack’s monthly report: September 2022

Paying tribute to the Queen

As Ed Davey said in paying tribute,

For many people, including myself, The Queen was an ever-fixed mark in our lives. As the world changed around us and politicians came and went, The Queen was our nation’s constant. The Queen represented duty and courage, as well as warmth and compassion. She was a living reminder of our collective past, of the greatest generation and their sacrifices for our freedom. My thoughts and prayers today go especially to the Royal Family. And they also go to people in every corner of the world whose lives she touched.

You can watch the tributes from other Liberal Democrats here

Cancellation of party conference

Following the death of the Queen, the Federal Board received a recommendation from the Federal Conference Committee (FCC) to cancel our autumn conference. We agreed to this after a special meeting. There was widespread understanding of the many drawbacks of cancellation, and how disappointed and out of pocket many members (including committee members) would be. But it was the least worst of the options available.

FCC chair Cllr Nick Da Costa explained the reasons for the cancellation, including the range of options considered, in an email to those registered for conference and which is also online here.

(If you were registered for conference and did not receive the email, you can contact [email protected] to check the party has an up-to-date email address for you and that you’re not opted out from such messages. It’s also worth checking to see if the emails are ending up in your spam folder.)

FCC is now looking at ways of putting on extra events to help fill some of the gaps left by cancellation, such as online sessions to hold party committees (and people like me!) to account and extra online training. If you were hoping to ask the Board any questions at conference, either at our helpdesk or in the formal Board report session, you can instead email them to me and I’ll do my best to ensure they all get answered.

The Returning Officer has also decided to adjust the timings for this autumn’s internal elections as they overlapped with The Queen’s funeral. Details are on the party website.

Receiving emails from the party

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President’s Report August 2022

The next general election

With a new Conservative Party leader nearly upon us, the range of plausible dates for the general election is wide open. As it now may well be much sooner than seemed likely at the time of our last conference, the Federal Board has been reviewing our general election plans.

Preparations are being stepped up across the party. The pre-manifesto document being debated at conference is an important part of that as is Ed Davey’s announcement of a major new package to help people with their fuel bills this winter – axing the planned increase in the fuel bill cap and providing extra help to those most in need.

This all makes now an even more important time for us all to be out on the doorsteps, recruiting new members and campaign helpers. There’s been a clear pattern in our recent electoral successes at all levels that building up campaign organisations well in advance of the formal election campaign is a central element to success.

A Membership Incentive Scheme is in place, with generous additional payments to local parties who recruit or renew party members locally, especially if it is done on direct debit.

Thanks in particular to our wonderful three Parliamentary by-election wins in the last year, when that general election comes, we’ll be a key part of the route to removing the Conservatives from government in Westminster.

That makes the Parliamentary seats in the (variously and flexibility defined) Blue Wall an increasingly important focus for us as the next general election polling day nears. But the majority of our councillors, our members and our voters are outside the Blue Wall.

So it’s not only the target seats for the next Westminster election we need to prosper at. We also need to be winning at other levels of election more broadly. We need to continue the sort of breadth in our recovery we saw in May’s local elections – amazing progress against the Conservatives in the Blue Wall and continuing recovery elsewhere, including up against Labour and the nationalists. Both of these tracks need to be successful for us to be a growing, national party.

That’s why the Board has continued to prioritise investment in the breadth of our campaigns officers network, supporting not only Parliamentary target seats but also progress in other areas too. Thank you to all the other parts of the party who have cooperated on this, giving us a much larger network of staff supporting grassroots campaigning than we had before.

Could you be a Returning Officer?

With Parliamentary selections picking up across the country, there has never been a better time to volunteer to be a Liberal Democrat Returning Officer.

Every Parliamentary selection is run by a trained Returning Officer – and although it is not a task for everyone, it’s a really valuable role that we need more volunteers for. Returning Officers need to be organised and methodical, to understand and interpret the rules, solve problems and work constructively with people whose perspectives on a situation may differ.

Does this sound like you or someone you know? If so, please contact / ask them to contact your Regional Candidates Chair in England or state Candidates Chair in Scotland and Wales to discuss the role and the availability of training. If you need putting in touch with the relevant person, just drop me a line.

There’s a training session being run on the Sunday morning at Conference, so now is a great time to get people thinking about this role.

Note that a Returning Officer cannot run selections for the local party of which they are a member, but they can help others so that others can help you.

Treating our staff well

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Mark Pack’s monthly report – June 2022

Tiverton and Honiton

We saw last year what a huge boost it gave to the party getting two new excellent MPs elected in Parliamentary by-elections. It’s good for their constituents and also good for the party’s prospects across the whole country.

We’ve also seen this month how Conservative MPs have failed to do what our country needs – to remove Boris Johnson from 10 Downing Street.

Which is why the latest contest in Tiverton and Honiton is so important for us all again. The single most effective thing you can do in the next few weeks to help bring about his demise – and to help the party win in your own patch – is to help Richard Foord get elected on 23 June.

Many of the team have gone straight into this campaign from the May local elections, without the chance to pause for the hoped for break after those. Thank you hugely to everyone who is stretching themselves to give Richard the best of chances of winning.

Thank you too to Jamie Needle and the team in Wakefield, fighting a carefully targeted campaign there which I’m sure will help the continued growth of our council group on Wakefield Council.

Treating our staff well

Some good news to report on party staff: the federal party has been awarded the ‘excellence’ status by the Good Work Standard for how we go beyond legal minimum requirements in looking after staff.
With the amount of change since the 2019 election plus all the strains of lockdowns, it’s been a particularly tough few years for our staff. But standards such as this show how we’re taking seriously making the party a good and happy place to work.

Welcome to Cllr Mike Cox and Chris French

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President’s Update, February 2022, Europe, Party reform, supporting candidates, new Vice President

The next steps in our European policy

There’s a lesson we should learn from Brexiters. It’s that for most of the road to the tragedy of the 2016 referendum they weren’t Brexiters but Euro-sceptics. For most of that time, they weren’t campaigning for Brexit to happen tomorrow, but against a particular aspect of the EU. That is how they built up a broad coalition of support to get Brexit through.

In turn, we need to do the same in reverse – to recognise that even many Remainers are put off by ‘let’s rejoin the EU now!’, but that even those who voted Leave can be won over by campaigning issue by issue on the merits of cooperation with our neighbours.

It’s an approach that party members overwhelmingly supported in our recent (with a record-breaking response!) consultation.

At our spring federal conference, we’ll be fleshing out the details of what this means when we debate a motion which sets out our comprehensive plan to reconnect our political and trading relationship with Europe.

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Mark Pack’s January report – the plan to build on our success in 2022

In 2021 we achieved something we’ve not achieved since 1993: winning two Parliamentary by-elections in the same year off the Conservatives. We start this new year with a larger Parliamentary Party than any of us would have dared dream of a year ago. (A winning run that has continued with the first council by-election of this year too – congratulations to now councillor Andrew Dunkin who won a seat from Labour from third place.)

The question now is how do we build on that success in 2022, and how do we make the most of our limited resources? Here’s the plan.

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Mark Pack’s November report: North Shropshire beckons…

Our campaign has already got off to a flying start in the by-election caused by Owen Paterson’s disgrace.

The local party had already made impressive progress in this May’s local elections. They secured a clear second place and created many marginal Conservative-Liberal Democrat wards.

Now we have a brilliant opportunity to turbo-charge that growth in our support and to see just how angry voters are about sleaze and sewage. Ed Davey is already on his third visit there.

Whether it’s by helping in person, on the phones or with your wallet, please do help too. You can donate online or sign up to volunteer. Thank you!

Thank you also to Simone Reynolds and Simon Drage, respectively our candidate and agent for the Old Bexley and Sidcup by-election. More details here.

Have your say in how the party is run

There are two musts for how our party is run. It must be run in a way that is true to our values, and it must be run in a way that helps us work together to be successful.

Sadly, our 2019 General Election Review (the Thornhill Review) found major flaws in how the party operated. That cost us votes and seats.

Since its publication, the Federal Party has been making many changes in response, as I’ve covered in previous reports. But there is still important work to do.

One of the Review’s key findings was about the Federal Board itself:

There is no clear ‘leadership team’ where the three pillars of the party – political, operational, federal – can make cohesive decisions, simply, quickly, and effectively. The Federal Board – 40+ members – is not, cannot, and should not be that team.

So the Board is consulting on options for Board reform, and will put one or more to Spring Conference for members to make a decision.

As part of this we are running a consultation survey. Please do give your views via the consultation survey here.

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Mark Pack’s October update

The autumn party conferences traditionally mark the start of the new political season. They are a time to reflect on the past year and set out plans to succeed in the coming year.

Both politics and coronavirus have made it a tough time since the last round of conferences. But we can look forward to this new political season with confidence that if we continue to raise our game, we can prosper. We’ve seen signs of that already, including with Sarah Green’s fantastic win in Chesham and Amersham and also with the latest net favourability leadership polling from Savanta ComRes:

  • Keir Starmer: net -8
  • Boris Johnson: net -7
  • Ed Davey: net +1

To achieve success in the run of elections to come, we will need to think big. We need to convince wavering Tories, Labour and nationalist voters that backing us isn’t solely a protest. It’s also a vote for something positive. The antidote to the strains of the present is a liberal future. So we must paint a picture of the society we want to build, rather than merely the society we want to prevent.

We’ve made a good start on that with the debates, motions and speeches at our autumn Federal Conference. There will be more to come in the next few months too from the federal party, as we develop the emphasis on a fair deal that was at the heart of Ed Davey’s speech. (Plans for next year’s conference have been announced by conference committee chair, Nick Da Costa.)

Congratulations to…

Our conference closed with the party awards. We now run these twice a year in recognition of how important it is for us to thank and be inspired by our colleagues. You can read all about this time’s winners – including a lovely family connection for one award – here.

We’ve also started sending out ‘top canvasser’ pin badges to thank those who contribute, either on the doorsteps or on the phone, to one of the most important election-winning tasks. Each quarter we’re also inviting those who have canvassed the most to a special call with Ed Davey, our Director of Campaigns Dave McCobb and others so that what people are hearing on the ground gets fed directly in. This is to make sure we never repeat the 2019 campaign mistake of people on the ground knowing a message isn’t working, and it taking too long to change it from the centre.

I’m keen that we continue to look for other ways to recognise people who contribute so much to the party. We’ve made changes to the party awards to recognise a wider range of contributions but I’m sure we can do more. Ideas very welcome.

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Mark Pack’s September update

Setting out our vision for the country

Our September Federal Conference has a key trio of debates on our vision for a Liberal Democratic society, our overall policy platform and the strategy to give us the political power to achieve those aims.

Having spent the first part of this Parliament fixing many of the practical organisational issues that caused so many problems in the 2019 general election, we now need to shift up a gear to get the external aspects right too. Sarah Green’s victory in Chesham and Amersham is a wonderfully inspiring example of what we can achieve when we get this right. The challenge is now to do that across the country.

It’s promising that we’ve seen a sustained boost in our opinion poll ratings since Sarah’s victory (up from 7% on average this year before her victory to 9% since). There’s also been a noticeable increase in our local council by-election performances since Sarah’s victory and the easing of coronavirus-related restrictions on local campaigning. Local factors mean it’s rarely wise to read too much into any one result, but the volume of by-elections – and their spread around the country – now means we look at that improvement with confidence that it’s real.

So we can also approach these conference debates with confidence about our potential – as long as we continue to up our game.

Improving people’s experience of being a member

Our party is our membership. Giving people a good experience is crucial for growing, retaining and encouraging people to be active in our party. And enabling individuals to create the change they want to see in the world is at the heart of our liberal philosophy.

To help get our plans right for this, the Federal People Development Committee (FPDC) is doing telephone research calls to understand the perspectives of ordinary members on what works and what doesn’t. If the random selector picks you out for a call, please do take part – and if you have time to volunteer to help make the calls, let me know and I can put you in touch.

Alongside this, a variety of ideas are starting to be piloted, such as new ways of recruiting canvassed Lib Dems as members, a new quarterly cycle of briefing and feedback video calls for all local party officers, and the special £1 registration fee for first-timers at Federal Conference. I’m also very happy to hear any suggestions from you.

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Mark Pack’s August update

Only £1 to come to conference

Our autumn federal party conference is being held online in September. There’s a brilliant offer for people who have not come to conference before: you can register for just £1.

Conference will include an important trio of linked debates: on our party’s values, our policy platform and our strategy. Traditionally, we have debated these separately at conference, even years apart. But all three need to fit together in a coherent way – which is one of the lessons from the 2019 election post-mortem. So this time we’re doing things differently.

The values and platform come from our Federal Policy Committee (FPC), while the strategy is being proposed by the Board. It sets out the practical approach which is needed to grow our party and win more elections, securing us more political power to deliver on what we believe.

Among the other conference items is also the latest stage in developing our post-2019 European policy, which you can read about here.

As I mentioned last month, the Board has also put in some important proposals for conference to decide on, including boosting our party bodies with an improved, simpler structure and set of rules. These come from the Party Body Review Group, which has run an extensive consultation with existing party bodies before drawing up the plans.

The full conference agenda and reports to conference booklet are both now out.

Additional support for the Racial Diversity Campaign (RDC)

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November Report from the President

I should start with a word of thanks – in fact, many words of thanks – to Kirsty Williams. She has announced that she will be standing down at the Welsh Senedd elections next May. As such a successful education minister in Wales, she is a daily demonstration of the difference that Liberal Democrats in power make. A consistently powerful voice for liberalism through all her many years of service, she has made such a big difference to so many lives. Thank you, Kirsty.

We need to get many more people like Kirsty elected in future. As the Thornhill Review

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The party President writes…Key party decisions coming up at the Federal Board meetings next week

How do we improve as a party and achieve greater success in future elections? That’s the theme running through the bumper set of key decisions the Federal Board is looking at next week at our meeting. (Or rather meetings, as to avoid Zoom fatigue, we’re splitting one long meeting into halves on consecutive nights.)

Included in that will be the Board’s first considerations of the independent election review, headed up by Dorothy Thornhill and coming out later today. Thank you for all their hard work to her, her colleagues and everyone who contributed evidence to the review.

Even without that review, there are some things we already know we need to change, in particular our use of technology. That’s why the Board will also be looking at major plans to overhaul our approach, learning from the best of those outside politics and from politics overseas. A big part of the plan is much better use of volunteer expertise.

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Our President and co-leader writes: How you can get involved in helping to run the party

The Liberal Democrats are about to fill nearly 50 important posts, responsible for everything from oversight of our campaigns through to improving our record on diversity and making sure our finances are in good shape.

Please do both think about going for one of these posts yourself, and also who else you might want to encourage to put their name forward.

We need the best team possible – which means people with brilliant skills, time to do the job properly and a much greater diversity than we often manage with such exercises.

If anyone would like to know more about what a particular post involves, I’m very happy for you to put them in touch with me and I can either directly help or put them in touch with someone with experience of the post.

More details of the posts are over on the party website.

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LibLink: Our new President/Co-leader on the surprising number of elections coming up in May

Embed from Getty Images

Over on his blog, Mark Pack, our new party President and co-leader, gives us a timely warning about the magnitude of voting opportunities this May:

This year’s round of local council elections are only in England and are the smallest round of that cycle of elections. Which may make you think that it’s a small set of elections and one in which many or even most parts of the country will not be voting.

But…

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Sal Brinton writes…A final thank you

As my Presidency draws to an end on New Year’s Eve, I wanted to write to you with a final thank you for the extraordinary help that you have given the liberal cause over the last five years.

To have faced three General Elections and the EU Referendum during these five years – as well as the snap European elections this year – has been unprecedented, draining for everyone who has worked in them. Our candidates and teams, party staff and the many members and supporters who have continuously found that extra bit of energy and effort kept fighting the liberal cause.

Added to this, our local government teams, led by ALDC, have worked consistently hard in elections every year and their success has been rewarded with substantial growth in councillors and councils that we control or run jointly with others. And in Scotland our MSPs hold the SNP to account, and Kirsty Williams is a brilliant Education minister in the Welsh Assembly.

I have been really proud to campaign with colleagues across the UK over the last five years, seeing members building the party in their areas and I want to thank you for your warm welcome over my Presidency. In 2017 alone I covered over 4,000 miles, getting to every part of the country! I have also witnessed the party develop its use of online campaigning, not least honed on the Stop Brexit campaign over the last three years.

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Why there will be no Kemp4Prez stickers at Conference

A reasonable number of people will know that before Christmas I was asking them about whether or not I should stand for the Party Presidency when it comes up for election later. A smaller number know that as a result of those discussions I have decided after Christmas that I will indeed be a candidate.

However, whilst I am not keeping it a secret, I am not yet starting a proper campaign. I am not acting this way because of indolence. In my 52 years in the Party I have never left an election to chance or thought that I would breeze in. The reason I am not doing anything yet is because I believe that there are three things even more important than filling this important post.

The first and most obvious one is that we either have to resolve not to leave Europe or work out how to deal with the consequences of having left. Of course, this all might have changed in the interval between you reading this and me writing it! Brexit will cast a long shadow over both our Country and politicians because of he way that it has been handled. Well done our First 11 for the splendid way they have thought and acted and our second 100 in the Lords have acted superlatively well but we will all have much to do in the coming few weeks and months whatever happens.

Secondly, we have the English local elections coming up on 2nd May and nothing but nothing should distract us from maximising our vote and maximising our number of councillors. This should be a national election and I would appeal to Scottish, Welsh and London colleagues to support campaigning near to you as you have no elections yourselves. Nothing will put us in a better position in the media than more councillors. Nothing will enhance our position with the “Independent Group” than us having even more bottoms on seats in Council Chambers.

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