This series of articles sees me exploring the options available to the Welsh Liberal Democrats ahead of the 2026 Senedd elections. You can find the first instalment here and the second here.
In this article, I aim to explore an alternative approach that fully embraces the principles of community politics.
Many thanks to the numerous Lib Dem Voice commenters who suggested this idea throughout the various discussions generated under my articles. Without the support of our community, these articles would still be sitting in my drafts folder!
We must examine how the Liberal Democrats have performed across the UK in local elections to understand why community politics should be employed on a national level.
In the 2022 Scottish council elections, the Scottish Liberal Democrats gained 20 seats, the joint-second highest result, following Labour, with the SNP gaining 22 seats. During the English 2025 council elections, the English Liberal Democrats gained 163 seats, finishing second-highest behind Reform and the only other party to gain seats in the three-digit region. And then we look to Wales. The Welsh Liberal Democrats gained 10 seats, finishing second behind Labour, which gained 66 seats.
Another strong election for the Lib Dems, although it rarely translates to national success outside of Westminster. While in Scotland, there are 5 Scottish Liberal Democrat MSPs; in Wales, we have only 1.
The main takeaway from this, for me, is that devolved Liberal Democrat parties must stop looking to the Westminster Liberal Democrats and start looking towards our grassroots. Our parish, town and county councillors have, time and again, performed amazingly at local elections, and yet, all we do is pat them on the back and move on from them, failing to recognise what made them successful: listening to the local community.
For too long, the Welsh Liberal Democrats have been perceived as a joke in Welsh politics, barely holding onto one seat and serving as a crutch for the Welsh Labour government when needed, only to have the government side with nationalists when it suited them.
While Plaid is hell-bent on making Wales an isolated nation, and Welsh Labour is too busy kowtowing to their Westminster masters in 10 Downing Street, the Lib Dems must be the party that listens to what local people need and reflects that in the next Senedd elections.
Only by walking the walk, not just talking the talk, will we have any chance of victory and creating a fairer, better Wales.
* Jack Meredith is a Welsh Liberal Democrat member. He is the spokesperson for Centre Think Tank on Social Security.
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5 Comments
“The Lib Dems must be the party that listens to what local people need and reflects that in the next Senedd elections”.
That’s all very well, but the snag is what do you do when what some local people say they need is thoroughly illiberal…… (e.g. closing asylum seeker hostels)….. and what do you do when there are conflicting opinions within a community ?
There is, or there ought to be, a clear difference between populism and liberalism.
Jack – the problem that the party in Wales has, it that fighting elections is (or was?) seen as a niche interest. It’s all rather vulgar. Standing a full slate of candidates, even more so. What proportion of seats in Wales did the party fight last time? One in five? Our strongest area, Powys, still had swathes of wards where we don’t put candidates up due to indolence or fear of upsetting some octogenarian Independent.
Lyell raises an important point.
Finding candidates is something you have to plan for. There will simply not be enough party members willing to stand. I know. For many years, I was the person responsible for finding candidates and I can tell you that the majority of people I recruited were not then party members. Too many people believe it’s just too hard a job and give up.
Connect can give you a list of people to ask. You then just turn up UNANNOUNCED and ask. Of course there are ways to ask and guides as to how to do it, but please forget emails, the phone, social media, almost all guaranteed to get you a negative response.
The watchword is start early and be persistent. in 2019, I had to find 18 candidates and we had 4 when I was asked to step in barely 3 months before the election – and 2 of them were my wife and I. 3 of the successful candidates had never stood before and 2 were not even members of the party before standing. And yes, we had 18 candidates and almost all of them played some role in fighting the election.
For me local elections are what matter most. I always wanted to be a local councillor, never an MP, and for many years felt that I had more real power than our Lib Dem MP. (That has changed in recent years – it’s Ed Davey). Gradually building up our numbers over the years and finally running the Council, we could see that councillors could really make a difference to the people they served.
Although winning control of a council is often a precursor to electing an MP it should not be seen simply as a means to an end. Running a Council is a noble end in itself.
@Mick Taylor – Like you I was tasked with finding candidates then getting them approved and selected. For our 2022 local elections I had to find 48 electable candidates – 44 got elected. I started recruitment three years before, approvals began two years before and selections one year before. It is a big, time-consuming task and needs careful planning.
Mary’s timetable sounds about right. Given that the next Welsh local elections are in 2027 and there is no requirement to “wait until the Senedd elections are over” (that’s simply a convenient excuse), I daresay all Welsh local parties will be starting the process of identifying candidates this summer, doing approvals over the winter and selections in the early spring. And I’m sure they’ve had guidance from HQ in Cardiff about how to do this, with a meaningful financial incentive for Local Parties who manage to field a full slate.