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
Memberships ARE just for Christmas
When working in the membership team at Lib Dem HQ there was one question each of the chief executives I work under would be asking me at least once a month if not once a week. That question was, “What’s our current retention rate?” The answer to this each quarter was vital, largely because of money.
Most of us do not remember to cancel direct debit when we should. However, if 16% have joined the Green party in the last two weeks cancel their membership within the next year, that is over £1 million in regular committed income that the Green party has lost. That sort of money that radically changes the plans and the ambitions that you can have as a political party. You may think that retaining 84% of your members is an easy task. Retention rates for members of anything above 80% is something that most charitable organisations and political parties would kill for. There are times when I would have done!
A larger membership costs more to manage
I know that the team at Green Party HQ will be jubilant at the moment and I am not here to take that away from them. But there will come a point in 3 to 6 months’ time, where they will wish this membership surge had never happened. When your membership goes up by 650%. The number of email queries you receive also goes up by 650%. The amount of candidate applications, policy suggestions from members, and complaints about behaviour of other members also go up by 650%.
Some of the people currently working at Green Party HQ are people that I used to work with at Lib Dem HQ. Recently I’ve often spared a thought for them, not at the jubilation that they must currently be feeling but the thankfulness I feel that I will not be in their shoes when the rubber really hits the road. I would happily bet money that around about six months from now someone at Green Party HQ will say the words “this political party would be much better if it didn’t have any members”.
Memberships subscriptions a war chest does not make
When preparing for a general election any political party will have been building up a war chest of funds. The amount in this war chest will be a large determining factor as to how many seats they are able to target at the general election. Campaigners in each political parties HQ will have a strong idea of how much it will cost to either gain or hold a seat at the general election.
Even though the Greens have gained around 6 million in income per year of this membership surge. This will largely be used for ongoing costs, further hampered by the cost of managing a larger membership, and not accounting for the natural attrition of membership over the coming years. There will not be much leftover to fight the next general election. When I tell you that the Labour party and the Conservatives at the last general election had a war chest of £30m and £23m respectively. A small share of £6 million looks an awful lot like small change.
* Mills Dyer (she/they) is a recovering Lib Dem HQ staffer (2014-21) and a former member of the Federal Board as staff rep (2017-21). Now just an ordinary member in East London.
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14 Comments
Mills Dyer’s local party must be grateful to have an “ordinary member” willing to share some home truths rooted in past experience!
Honestly the complacently I’ve seen from other members in this party over the Green surge is nothing short of appalling. It’s like we really don’t want our party to become a major political force!
First it was members don’t matter, then when they overtook us in the polls I’ve heard people claim this doesn’t matter, next it will be votes don’t matter, then it will be seats don’t matter.
I joined this party when the greens had no MPs 1% of the vote. And even then people did at least recognise that they were a problem.
Now that this problem is 1500% greater we should be thinking long and about what we should be doing differently, not trying desperately to think up reasons as to why it might not matter.
The Greens have overtaken us with Find Out Now and You Gov.
Not with other pollsters. Averaging across we are still ahead.
I would make two points about this, first there’s little point trying to assess any Green Party threat before The Founding Conference of “Your Party” in 3 Weeks time. All the Polling suggests that Your Party will take a big chunk of Green support if it gets off the ground.
Secondly, we have lots of evidence from the Actual Elections that happen every Week & so far there is no evidence of a Green surge, if anything they have gone backwards. We have made 19 Gains since May, The Greens have also Gained, 1 Seat.
An interesting article – thank you.
It’s one thing to join, it’s quite another thing to be involved – the question is if they can motivate and mobilise those new members.
I joined the Lib Dems in 2016, more with the aim of chucking some money their way each year than actually doing anything (I’ll leave that to people who know better, I thought). The local party got in touch pretty quickly and made me feel welcome, before inviting me to discuss policy… followed up by some bundles of Focus to deliver. And then more things to do. It’ll be ten years next year, how time flies!
Paul, an immediate test is on Thursday, North Ashton by election, close to Bristol..
2 seat ward won by Lib Dem and Green since 2019, each only put up 1 candidate. now it is a fight, with Reform as well. I have a close relative who is a Green organizer and
totally unaware, disbelieving and surprised of Polanski’s views on NATO etc.
We have to treat them as an enemy not a friend.
If they beat us on Thursday Polanski will be in the media saying we are finished etc.
“there was one question each of the chief executives I work under would be asking me at least once a month if not once a week. That question was, “What’s our current retention rate?”
Says more about the quality of the relevant Chief Execs I suspect than anything else 🙂
There isn’t anything in this about how a sudden influx can shift the political centre of gravity of a party which was certainly the case with the post 2015 pro-coalition membership influx (it made the incoming leadership more reluctant to distance themselves from the coalition record which Tim was in a position to do) and post EU referendum with an influx of not-actually-very-liberal but pro-EU people from both the other main parties – think ChangeUK
I remember similar things being said when UKIP first overtook the Lib Dems in c.2012 – it’s only certain pollsters, they aren’t winning any local by-elections…..
“The Greens have overtaken us with Find Out Now and You Gov. Not with other pollsters. Averaging across we are still ahead.”
” it’s only certain pollsters, ”
The graphical and statistical (LOESS) analysis of recent poll results tells a different story.
The Greens have overtaken you and look to be accelerating away. Paul Barker was somewhat premature in claiming that Reform had plateaud recently but it looks like they have now.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Opinion_polling_graph_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election_%28post-2024%29.svg/1920px-Opinion_polling_graph_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election_%28post-2024%29.svg.png
John Harris has a useful perspective:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/09/21st-century-politics-labour-tories-turbulence-green-party-reform
Conventional two-party-politics leaders (May, Sunak, Starmer) live in the real world. But they are defeated by it. They flounder. As Harris puts it “a governing style that tends to mix complacency with ineptitude.”
Populists (Corbyn, Johnson, Truss, Sultana, perhaps Polanski) live in a dream world. Freed from the constraints of reality, their soaring rhetoric lifts them into contention. Until, like Johnson and Truss, they actually gain real power, which is when they crash and burn.
Where does Ed Davey come on the defeated-realist versus populist spectrum? Well, the stunts are populist. The semi-disengaged approach (campaigning on favoured issues while keeping pretty silent about many others) also smacks of populism. On the other hand, the telling interventions on Trump, Europe, and recently the BBC do engage well with reality.
At worst, the Lib Dems fall between two stools – Too cautious to be truly populist, too limited in what they can offer to look like a real government. At best, they could keep their elements of populism, but merge them with a sharper engagement with the tougher dilemmas which governments are faced with. Do taxes need to rise? What can be done about the cost of living? What can be done about the global descent into savagery?
As the Greens are a left wing party, the majority of their votes will be from Labour. Goodbye Labour and good riddance
It’s not the Greens’ membership surge that matters as much as their rise in the polls. This is something the Lib Dems need to learn from, as the party has missed an opportunity for the party to capitalise on the voters who want an alternative to both Labour and Reform.
They could definitely learn a thing or two from Zack Polanski. He comes across really well in interviews, even when I disagree with him. He actually gives questions straight answers, even thw ‘gotcha’ ones. He sticks to his values and refuses to bow to the right while acknowledging the anger that voters have. He talks about kitchen table issues rather than headline-grabbing ones. This is something we should learn from.
When I joined the SDP by telephone in December 1985 after an inspiring PPB by Shirley Williams, I received a welcoming telephone call from my local party within a week, presumably after being informed by HQ. Does that still happen?
When I started volunteering in the Membership Department in 2005, members were reminded (by post) to renew their membership. Do reminders (by email or post) still happen?
Membership retention is important.
The results yesterday appear to answer the questions. The Greens are indeed surging if not soaring.