Tag Archives: urban campaigning

The celebratory yellow smoke from the 2024 general election may have cleared, but inside the local party branches of some of our major cities a very different kind of atmosphere is settling in. It is a thick, unmistakable sense of urban unease.

Whilst the national narrative remains focused on the “Blue Wall” breakthroughs, a growing contingent of activists and councillors in our urban heartlands are beginning to ask a difficult but very necessary question: at what cost?

As others have intimated on this website over the past week, in the wake of recent local election results the mood among urban Lib Dems has shifted from quiet concern to open frustration and potential dissent.

I got a sense of this when, on Thursday evening, whilst on the train travelling down to London to appear on Talk, I got a message from a very prominent city-based Lib Dem asking if I had a few minutes for a chat. In our subsequent phone call this person, usually very affable, was noticeably reaching the end of their tether at what they perceive as the party leadership all but abandoning us being competitive in urban areas. I gave this a brief mention on Talk later that evening and clipped it up for social media the next day. The reaction from others in the party was interesting and, in some cases, very telling. Whilst most folks agreed that something is going very badly wrong others tried to suggest that everything is hunky dory in the party and there are no problems.

As I suggested on my Political Frenemies podcast on Friday evening, sticking your head in the sand and ignoring the reality of a situation is not a very sensible or useful way to behave for a political party.

For years the party’s strategy has pivoted heavily toward suburban and rural gains – a strategy that undeniably delivered seats in Parliament. However, on the ground in our cities, many feel the federal party is leaving them to rot.

Several well-known figures within the party have now broken ranks. Tom Gordon MP, Cllr Victor Chamberlain and former London Mayoral candidate Rob Blackie have all waded in. In private forums and increasingly public social media posts, activists are criticising recent local election results as a sign of an ever-narrowing political identity for the party. It is clear that tailoring our message so specifically to disenchanted Conservatives in the shires, we are becoming background noise in the diverse, high-density wards of the English North and Midlands.