The local elections produced brilliant results overall, considering we were defending seats won in a good year. But there is always a downside and we best progress when we consider the downside honestly and try to deal with it.
In five authorities – all in the North or North Midlands – we lost our sole or only two councillors: Bassetlaw, Bury, East Staffordshire, Sandwell (lost two) and Stockton on Tees. When one councillor is elected in such places, it’s usually a very hardworking community activist – though in one or two cases, the lone or two councillors may have been survivors of a once-sizeable group. We have broken through in Middlesbrough, but I couldn’t see any other cases where we went from none to one or more (though in Maldon, we’d gained our first in a by-election and then went up to five). So the outcome is: FEWER councils have Liberal Democrat councillors.
There are several Labour-dominated councils where we had no representation before and none now, including such big places as Nottingham, Wolverhampton, Stoke on Trent and Plymouth. In Derby, we went down from 8 to 4.
Even in my county of Essex, where Maldon’s fine success happened and Tendring, Rochford and Epping Forest made gains from a relatively small base, we are unrepresented in Basildon, Braintree, Castle Point, Harlow and Thurrock. Basildon and Harlow had substantial Liberal Democrat groups not so long ago.
The difficulty of counteracting a Labour surge is not the whole story, as we made gains in Hull, Lincoln, Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Newcastle and Sunderland (interestingly, a marked bias to the North-east there).
We seem to be concentrating resources now heavily on relatively few parliamentary targets. Those local parties that lost their one hard-working community activist Lib Dem councillor, and those that have nothing, need support just as much. That should not be glossed over when decisions about resources are made at Federal, national or Regional level. We must be building for the future.
* Simon Banks is an activist in Tendring, North-east Essex, and former council group leader, Waltham Forest.
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Boston Borough Council is no longer a black hole, although I’m the only LibDem. Lincoln and South Kesteven also saw gains and West Lindsey LibDems deservedly took control from the Conservatives.
We went from zero to ‘not zero’ in Amber Valley, Boston, Bracknell Forest, Breckland, Havant, Melton, Middlsbrough, Slough, South Staffordshire, Stafford, Swindon and West Suffolk. Although there may be some in there that didn’t actually start from nowt because of by-elections or defections.
Alas, the strength seems to be , by and large ,in the south.To build up in the north maybe we should sellect possible areas for growth.
With FPTP voting our best chance is in geographical areas where our vote is reasonably concentrated. Roughly the South of England. Notice that the SNP does very well on not very many votes per MP because their voters are concentrated.
I think people on both sides of this arguement are overestimating the influence of the national party’s targetting strategy. Apart from the efforts and tactics of our local activists, the main influences on the results were the perceived incompetence of the Tories and the perceived inoffensiveness of Labour. Where are national party does have influence is in the public perception of the character of the party. My worry is that they are targetting this towards short-term popularity among demographics which are currently lending us their votes to the detriment of those demographics which would actually benefit from our policies.
Hello Simon,
Thanks for your important article. Your data (as John points out) is a tad inaccurate, but your concerns are very valid.
Back on 14th May, I responded to some dodgy stats from Mark Pack where I pointed out “before May we had 0 seats in 57 councils where there were elections. In these we made no progress in 44, in 7 councils had a single success and in the other 6 councils gained another 15 between them. In the 13 councils where we had a single councillor, 4 went back to zero, 3 still have one and 6 made progress (total net gains 18).
At a time where in two consecutive elections (4 years apart) we made massive gains, but our total lack of traction in so many areas should be deeply concerning. In those areas I don’t see any evidence of a central plan to deal with this problem. If there is one, perhaps you could enlighten us?”
We all realise that motivating the troops with good news is vital, but we also need our senior figures to look at this stuff and come up with a plan to improve things.
Sadly to my question to Mark, answer came there none.
And on that last point I don’t have a clue what we can do about it.
On Peter’s point, I agree on the main aspect, but disagree on part of his conclusion.
I would restructure Peter’s narrative to “the main influence on our good local results was the total incompetence and untrustworthyness of the Tories and the irrelevance and incompetence of Labour. In lots of the South East, we are seen as relevant, competent and possible winners. Labour are not. In far too much of the North we are looked on as irrelevant. The key factor in our relevance and success are the efforts and tactics of our local activists.
Where our national party does have influence is in the public perception of the character of the party. My worry is that they are targetting this towards short-term popularity among demographics which they frame as “lending us their votes” rather than accepting and reinforcing the message that they are actually more in accord with our values than those of the Tories. Saying that people are sick of the Conservatives’ incompetence (all of them), arrogance (Boris) and sense of entitlement (Braverman) and are realising that the Lib Dems are much closer to their values, is a much more positive message and more likely to make them regular Lib Dem voters than “Lend us a vote, mate.”
As for “those demographics which would actually benefit from our policies,” – The whole country would benefit from us being in government (if we can get it right this time).
And then we have the problem of the Greens who will be an ever increasing danger over the next few years, we need a coherent strategy to hold them back otherwise we will be the fourth party in England by the next decade.
@David Evans
“Sadly to my question to Mark, answer came there none.”
Why am I not surprised?
Sharing concerns about lack of traction in so many areas, what do people think could be done – ignoring whatever anyone from HQ has to say about the situation?
This is a really good article. I very much agree with the last paragraph. Basildon I visit regularly. The problem the Lib Dems seem to have there is they don’t seem to make much of an effort in local elections now. Someone I know in Pitsea did not vote Lib Dem as they did not get a leaflet from the party and wanted to know what they would do on local issues in a ward of high crime, fly tipping, pot holes etc. So no leaflet no vote. An Independent stood here put out a good leaflet and came a respectable third.
Surely it can’t be that difficult for the party to fund one leaflet to non target seats or for the local party to fundraise. It does make a huge difference to people’s perceptions of the party and whether to vote for them. I’d like to know what Simon thinks on this? The other issue is picking up on local campaigns relevant to those areas whether it be pollution from an incinerator or neighbourhood policing etc.
As theakes has said the Greens are a big problem and often seen as the main alternative to Labour facing in many areas of London and elsewhere. Maybe it would be worth looking at why they lost traction in Brighton. Some of their policies may not be so popular when they get power or majority party status as when they only have a few Councillors in that area I think.
Hello Ralph Pryke. Couldn’t keep away I see. Well done
Brighton’s Greens first headed the council in 2011 – a minority administration.
This ended in disarray and chaos, as council workers weren’t paid, following the administration losing control of the finances. Strikes ensued. Caroline Lucas came out in favour of the workers. So the Greens’ only MP was at loggerheads with the UK’s only Green-led council.
Meanwhile the bold environmental party ducked serious action on Brighton’s thunderously heavy traffic, shying away from plans for a much bigger park and ride.
They were back as a minority admin in 2019. This time they weren’t as shambolic. But still ducked serious action on traffic, choosing to hoick parking fees, without alternative public transport provision.
Basic maintenance of pavements and collection of rubbish has been poor, not helped by further strikes. Moreover, the council tore down a large part of the Victorian era Green Wall along the sea front, a beloved symbol of Brightons’ commitment to nature in town. This down to a lack of oversight by the relevant Green councillors. Shocking really and they deservedly go into opposition.
They’ll be back though. The LDs locally should shrug off their inferiority complex and try to win a foothold. We used to have a few council seats. None currently.
As for derelict areas, it’s nowadays possible to seek out new leading potential activists from afar. Trawling through local media usually throws up several names of community minded folk.
Then it’s a matter of asking, if they’d like to stand and so on.
It’s quite labour intensive at first. But really you only need a handful of activists to get going and work a first ward. And thereby recruit yet more new members.
I’d have thought the central party could organise volunteers to do this grunt work or local parties might see the benefit of having a more active neighbour.
One thing which stands out from these elections is that there are quite a few places where the Liberal Democrats ended up with far more councillors than their votes would entitle them to – and there are many places where the Tories were hard done by. This all shows that local government needs PR. Even if they don’t support it for Parliament, the Tories should consider it for local government.
That’s a good point David. Now is the time to plant the seeds in the minds of local Conservative activists that they’d be better off with STV in local elections. Whether or not those local cllrs think like many Labour MPs and would rather spend time in opposition if it means unearned absolute power comes along eventually is another thing, but I like to think that most people who put themselves forward for local elections are more pragmatic about sharing power.
If we can make the point about PR for local elections now it may be that is what we push for from a minority Labour government. Or even a majority one should the opportunity arise. Starmer may try to duck and dive on introducing PR for Westminster, but we might find it easier to get PR for local government over the line. And push for AV (not supplementary vote) for Mayoral elections.
Being careful what I say as LDV is a forum watched by not party people.
I did write an article in Alliance of Lib Dems (closed) facebook page last week.
But the Stockton on Tees issue was not that there was not finance for campaigns. Being a lone councillor is very hard indeed, I was in my 30’s when I was and you need the health, strength and a lot of support to do it, and to grow.
Activists grow old, if lucky, some don’t get the chance to age.
Electorally what do we need to achieve to reach our goals? Our primary objective at the coming GE is depriving the Conservatives of power. Then we need to influence Labour to improve our voting system so that these large parts of the country do have some Liberal Democrat representation. To achieve the latter we need to gain a certain amount of parliamentary seats. I don’t know the number but our resources in the short term must be invested in acheiving it.
My apologies: I could find only one gain of council seats from nil on the Guardian website. ALDC after I posted listed 11! How that happened I don’t know. However, the point remains: five annihilations (four of a single councillor, one of two), all in the North or North Midlands. Relatively few gains where we had just a small group (which seems to apply throughout). Too many blank areas with no near prospect of ceasing to be blank. Where a strong local party is near to such an area, it can at least “adopt” the weaker area. In Maldon that was through the local parties merging, but that isn’t the only way. In some cases the problem seems to lie in the attitudes of the small group hanging on in the weak area. In others, the problems of the few activists in the weak area are not understood by those who have succeeded and tend to say, “Just do as we do”. Finally, as other shave said, a major geographical imbalance has developed since 2010 and needs long-term thinking.
Across the two “Cheshire” council’s last May we made a nett loss of 3 seats, from 6 to 3.
What’s worrying is that before the 2009 council reorganisation in Cheshire we had 60-70 councillors across the same area.
This decline has not been for the lack of trying, and experienced local campaigners. But we lack traction here, unlike areas such as say Somerset or South Cambridgeshire.
This is a national problem, although I have never assumed that we should rely on a national upsurge to win local votes.
@Simon Banks “a major geographical imbalance has developed since 2010”
Apologies for effectively repeating a post from a few weeks ago (and a point I have made several times over the years), but that geographical imbalance probably reflects a more serious socioeconomic one.
Alasdair Rae graphically shows the correlation between deprivation and political representation for parliamentary constituencies (https://twitter.com/undertheraedar/status/1390632762105806856). Lib Dem by-election successes have probably further cemented the party’s position on the right of the diagram in more affluent places where Rae’s infographics show it has become increasingly concentrated since 2001. And that by-election strategy appears to have involved (understandably, but unfortunately) noise and activity in affluent southern seats while having low/no profile elsewhere. When the party does get excited about parliamentary seats in the north of England, it’s more likely to be places like Sheffield Hallam or the leafier parts here in Cheshire.
Perhaps this underpins Peter Davies’ concerns about targeting “short-term popularity among demographics which are currently lending us their votes to the detriment of those demographics which would actually benefit from our policies.”
There is a lot of genuine concern about combating poverty expressed on this site, and the party conference in not-so-recent years voted against grammar schools and faith schools, but it sometimes appears that the leadership doesn’t want to talk about that sort of Lib Dem-ism for fear of scaring away those targeted vote-lenders, leaving it unclear what is the point of the party. 🙁