Tag Archives: political party membership

As someone that worked in the membership department at Lib Dem HQ during a time when we had three surges in membership in as many years, I got to know the elation and pitfalls of membership surges. When you are in them, they are intoxicating and enthralling but, as soon as they end, that is when the hard graft starts. That applies to both the national and local parties.

However, looking back to the several years of Lib Dem membership surges, I find myself asking did it matter? Below I’ve sketched out three reasons why they did and three why I think they were completely irrelevant. Good advice to both the Green party and any other party that might be surging in membership at the moment.

Why they matter

Money, Money, Money.

According to the Green party’s own Instagram post (dated 27th Oct) around 130,000 new members have joined the party since Zack Polanski was elected leader. With a non-concessionary membership rate of £60 a year, that leaves the Green party with just over £7.8 million in income. Of course, not everyone would’ve paid this, but many would have also donated when they joined.

In most membership driven organisations, membership subs are used to fund core costs. This will include staff, office premises, IT, HR and other infrastructure to keep the business of a political party running. This money will not necessarily be used to fight the next set of local elections that come around. If the Green Party is sensible, it will use that money to build capacity in local communities, especially in the 40 seats that the Green Party came second in at the last general election.

The creation of the die-hard activist.

Research done into the membership of political parties show that although the primary reason people joined political parties were ideological, finding a place to belong came a relatively close second. For those of us that either are or have been political activists, we will know that particularly during election times you can spend more time with activists than you do with your own family.

There is always a sliding scale of members participation in party activities. In my experience is that the majority will do nothing more than pay their membership subs and read the emails that they get sent from the central party. This runs all the way to the top 2% of activists, who spend every waking minute thinking about the design of a Focus leaflet or which by-election they’re going to go to on the weekend. Each membership surge has that 2% of hard-core activists. All the Green Party have to do is find them and touch them. 

Geographical spread

The Green Party have come from the base of just over 20,000 members. Which if we divide by the number of constituencies in England and Wales leaves the Green party with on average 34 members per Parliamentary constituency.  Of course, there will be constituencies where is the Green party have a larger active base and are likely to have many more than 34 members.

A geographical spread of membership that having over 150,000 members affords you, gives you a real boost in the number of candidates you can field in local elections. If we take the last set of full council elections (2024). At those elections both the Conservatives and Labour contested over 90% of the local council seats up that year. The Green party just managed 62%. This is a massive achievement but still way short of a full slate of candidates, especially considering that the local elections in 2024 had a relatively small number of councillors up for election.

Why it is completely irrelevant