Good news from Southwark:
We won all three seats in the deferred election for London Bridge & West Bermondsey!
Congrats to all three top candidates!
That means that, nationwide, the @Libdems gained more seats in the 2018 local elections than Labour did! pic.twitter.com/yt2Q3ndWxs— Southwark Lib-Dems (@swklibdems) June 15, 2018
Well done to our new councillors.
London Bridge & West Bermondsey (Southwark) result:
LDEM: 44.4%
LAB: 41.1%
CON: 7.3%
GRN: 7.1%Liberal Democrat WIN (X3)
New ward.
Shares calculated w/ top vote method)
— Britain Elects (@britainelects) June 15, 2018
In Doncaster, we stood a candidate and got 2.8% of the vote from a standing start. If the local party can find some of those people and engage them, then that is how we start to claw our way back up in places where we are not strong.
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22 Comments
The deferred wins in Southwark offer a useful boost to Lib Dems in Labour facing seats in the Northern Mets following some poor results in May. I know London is different and incredible effort went into some of our successful defences, but there are no short cuts to getting back to pre-2010 levels. Congratulations and thank you to London Bridge and West Bermondsey.
There is a large percentage of the electorate looking for an alternative to the Tories and Labour, often we pick up that vote but it can quite easily be Independents, Greens or in the case of Doncaster The Yorkshire Party. The challenge for the Lib Dems is to become the default choice, to do that the party needs to rebuild structures it lost during the dark times of the coalition.
Yes! Thank you and well done!
frankie, The problem isn’t that we lost those structures in coalition. We allowed our leader to destroy them. Sadly, I don’t see anyone near the top even worrying about it. You only have to see the latest joke of a Lib Dem Newsletter that came out today. it describes Lewisham as a spectacular and amazing result.
I only suggest that the person who wrote it looks in the newspapers and the mainstream media. Amazing would have been a win a new MP, a new beginning, but as Caron has commented in another thread “We have to remember as well that this hasn’t had the Witney or Richmond Park intensity of campaign.”
Now if we had given the Lewisham campaign the Richmond treatment, or maybe just the Witney treatment we might just have won. Instead we are trumpeting an increase in our vote of just under 3,500 as amazing, we might just have got ourselves an extra MP. Why didn’t we?
I really do worry that so many of us are prepared to accept second (or even third) best.
As an indication of how the media is ignoring us, you only have to look at Sky News in one of their news bulletins on Friday morning. They covered Lewisham East and said that we came second, but made no mention of the increase in our vote or the fact that we pushed the Tories into third place. They also covered the upskirting issue and had three people speaking about it – but made no mention of Wera Hobhouse.
One thing we can definitely say wont help is obsessing over the Past & blaming each other. Those who turned up to The Special Conference to oppose Coalition have the right to pontificate but the rest of us dont. Why should I be held any less responsible than Nick Clegg ?
On Lewisham East, there was never the slightest chance of us winning, whatever scale of Campaign we put on, this was an area where we came 4th, behind The Greens, just 6 Weeks earlier. To double our Vote share in 5 Weeks seems pretty impressive to me.
David,
Indeed the blind lack of concern of the Libdem leadership during the coalition as the party was gutted of voters, activists and elected members was a wonder to behold. Many of us cried you are heading over a cliff, grow a spine turn back from the cliff but even as they hurtled over it they still thought they’d have 30 MP’s. They had gone hunting for unicorn voters who would appreciate their grown up politics, alas unicorns do not exist, as they found out eventually but for most of them at the cost of their seats. The interesting thing is now but a few years after finding people to defend the hunt for unicorns is getting harder and harder, no longer are the petorian guard rushing to their defence, no longer are dissenting voices muzzled, the best the leadership of that failed hunt get is “that’s in the past, we need to rebuild the party, quite, a pity it took so long to see that. As an aside I suspect a similar fate awaits the brave Brexiteers as we hurtle over that cliff they will still think it will be OK , only to find that finding a fellow believer in a few short years will be like finding a unicorn. Why we think they are all dead or have emigrated; in many case that will indeed be the case.
@David Blake ‘They also covered the upskirting issue and had three people speaking about it – but made no mention of Wera Hobhouse.’
That is outrageous. But what we need to do is complain. I remember when I was press officer for the Scottish party I asked a senior BBC person why they didn’t cover us very much and he just shrugged and said, ‘because you don’t complain enough.’ So we started doing so, and urging members to do so, and sure enough our coverage improved. We need to be more bolshy. I’m going to complain to sky about this now and hopefully you and everyone reading this will do the same.
Also, circulate these details to everyone in your local party and tell them to complain more often. Add the details of your local TV and radio stations as well.
Sky News: [email protected]
BBC: https://ssl.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/?lang=en&reset=&uid=799849152
ITV and Channel 4: https://www.itn.co.uk/contact-us/
Just a word about Doncaster. In some parts of Yorkshire the Yorkshire Party candidates are people who formerly stood for UKIP!
@Paul Barker, And one thing we can definitely say won’t help is portraying fellow Liberals, who are dismayed at our party’s unwillingness to even look at learning lessons, as obsessing and blaming. It may make us feel somehow more comfortable in ourselves, but in reality it is mere self protection.
Did those who couldn’t arrange time off to attend the Special Conference not have any rights, did those who were not chosen as conference reps for their local party not have the right, did those who could not believe how totally unresponsive it transpired Nick Clegg would be once in government not have the right?
And why describe it as pontificate except to try to belittle them?
You ask why should I be held any less responsible than Nick Clegg? Well did you deliberately break a pledge? Did you ignore and vote in direct contradiction to two votes in conference that opposed Secret Courts? Did you do a deal to support benefit sanctions in return for a plastic bag tax?
You say in in Lewisham East, there was never the slightest chance of us winning. How do you know? The one thing I know is that if you have a team that believes they can win, they might win. But if they believe they will lose, they will lose.
As for our vote of 5,404 seeming “pretty impressive” to you, the Lib Dems got 13,700 votes in the Lewisham East wards as recently as 2010. In the by-election, we couldn’t even get 40% of people who voted for us eight years ago to do so this time. Perhaps you are too easily impressed.
We can do so much better. But you have to be prepared to work harder than you ever have before.
It is that important.
Paul,
Harking on about the past isn’t done to justify those of us that foresaw the disaster the coalition would be for the Lib Dems (and by enabling the Tories an ongoing disaster for the country), to be blunt history has done that for us. It is done for the simple reason, if we don’t face up to the errors we made we will make them again and again. Reality is grim but trying to put a gloss on it just leads us to making the same mistakes again and again and again.
I’d suggest people who think we should forget look back through this site at the level of delusion and it “Will be alright on the night” that dragged the party down (and by removing the Lib Dems as a functioning party the country into the mess we are in).
a link to start with https://www.libdemvoice.org/six-thoughts-on-the-results-so-far-28390.html#comments Fri 4th May 2012 – 8:50 pm
p.s I intend to continue pointing out the stupidity of Brexit to the brave Brexiteers, as stupidity should never go unchallenged, hard as it is on them.
“Now if we had given the Lewisham campaign the Richmond treatment,”
Out of interest, did you go to Lewisham East during the campaign, David? – and, if so, what was your observation on the intensity of the campaign?
Paul,
Having read frankie’s link I note…..
paul barker 4th May ’12 – 5:14pm……I am beginning to wonder if voting in local elections is icreasingly being treated like a big opinion poll by many voters, a safe place to protest against recession, cuts & coalition while the important question of what to do at the general election is forgotten.
I still believe that we will get more votes than labour in may 2015 but its quite possible that voters will go on thumping us in the locals next year & the year after & in the polls.
The real danger for the coalition is that our members or the tories will lose their nerve before the real fight begins…………………….
Well, we didn’t ‘lose our nerve’; we almost lost our party!
@frankie “a link to start with…”
A blast from the past!
Back then I was writing “we” and “our leadership”, and looking for something “to help me decide whether or not to stick with the party I’ve supported since I was old enough to vote”. Now it’s “you” and “your leadership”, but at least I’m still looking!
Peter,
By May 2012 I had long ago torn up my membership (it went when the coalition deal was signed, but that was OK I’d soon be replaced by a Unicorn who would work tirelessly for the new Lib Dems). I attemptted like many others to shout turn back, but few of my postings made it past the Petorian Guards, who loyal to a fault followed the leadership’s hunt for Unicorns. Why you asked did I rejoin, well with all its faults the party is preferable to the alternatives and I dare to think a strong Liberal party standing with the people makes us a better society. Certainly since the demise of the local party without an oppersition the Labour council have been evenmore dire and I suspect others have seen the same with Tory councils.
@Paul Walter – I presume you read my post in full so you know my question was based not simply on my experience in Lewisham which was in my judgement an insufficient basis to form a detailed opinon, but on Caron’s article in LDV. I suggest you ask her next time you contact her.
@ David Evans I wouldn’t take that gentleman too seriously, David. He believes the Revolution and Resurrection can be achieved by paper candidates.
As you and I both know having both been elected several times in South Lakeland (pre and post Farron) it takes a lot of consistent hard work over several years. What will happen next time in East Lewisham after the caravanserai has moved on it will be interesting to see.
PS wasn’t referring to Paul W. – it was the other one.
David
I just wondered about your conclusion, not Caron’s observation. Your conclusion was:
“Now if we had given the Lewisham campaign the Richmond treatment, or maybe just the Witney treatment we might just have won. Instead we are trumpeting an increase in our vote of just under 3,500 as amazing, we might just have got ourselves an extra MP. Why didn’t we?”
Did you actually go to Lewisham? I just wondered because this may have given you an impression of the intensity of the campaign compared to Witney, which I assume you went to.
My experience of the Lewisham campaign, though based only on two days spent there, was that it was pretty intense and that all the usual Witney-like buttons were being pressed.
But I am just wondering whether there is a law of diminishing returns, the timescale between calling and holding the election, and the amount of local councillors and members when comparing Witney to Lewisham…
I wouldn’t doubt Caron’s knowledge of comparative campaign intensities being that she is on the Federal Board and in any case knows everything happening in the party. But it’s another step to say that if we had given it the Witney treatment we might have won. I doubt it.
At Witney we had 30% of the vote compared to 7% at the previous election.
At Lewisham East we received 24.6% of the result compared to 4.4% at the 2017 general election.
They seem relatively comparative results.
When delivering leaflets I came across the usual thing of seeing 2-4 Lib Dem leaflets already in porches, suggesting we were delivering at maximum levels. If we had had a further, let’s say, 600 or even 1,000 activist visits,with commensurate increases in repeat canvassing and leaflet delivery, in the run-up to the election to bring us up to Witney levels, would that have added 6,000 votes to our total (or persuaded 3,500 people who voted Labour to vote for us instead) so that we won the by-election? It seems highly unlikely indeed.
“if we had given the Lewisham campaign the Richmond treatment, or maybe just the Witney treatment ”
I’m not sure that the treatment being Richmond, Witney or Lewisham is any different. The outcomes are. Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc if there are 14 lawyers in the room 🙂
@ Paul, I wonder if I am the only person here who finds it rather curious that you asked “did you go to Lewisham East during the campaign, David? – and, if so, what was your observation on the intensity of the campaign?” when in fact you “just wondered about your (i.e. my) conclusion.” If you doubt a conclusion, I suggest you ask about it directly, it saves a lot of time.
Now I also know it can be a debating tactic to undermine a person someone disagrees with, by trying to cast doubt in others minds’ by first asking diversionary questions like ‘were you there?’ to possibly imply that the other person wasn’t and so his/her opinion is less worthy. So I sincerely hope you didn’t mean that, even though we have disagreed strongly in the past over the performance of the party (particularly the fundamental mistakes made I consider we made in coalition). I would simply point out that my presence was limited by the fact that I live in Cumbria, but I helped with all three and Shirley with two.
However, your second, clarifying post is much more interesting, because it directly challenges what I have suggested in very clear ways, and I appreciate you have done this because it allows what is an important difference of opinion to be assessed against the underlying facts, and I hope you don’t mind me pointing out what I consider to be the counter arguments to your points.
Firstly, you talk about your assessment of the Lewisham campaign where you refer to the fact that “all the usual Witney-like buttons were being pressed” and wonder “whether there is a law of diminishing returns, the timescale between calling and holding the election, and the amount of local councillors and members when comparing Witney to Lewisham.” Now I agree totally with your view that there is a Law of diminishing returns, but there is also the multiplier effect, the tipping point where it becomes clear to all that the third party are in with a chance and a snowball effect can occur. If you don’t give it enough early on, you simply don’t get the chance. The fact that Caron said it didn’t get the Witney intensity of campaign implies some of us decided (possibly a few centrally, possibly many individually, possibly both) decided not to give it that chance very early on.
Now unfortunately I will have to go to bed, early breakfasts to prepare I’m afraid, but I will respond to your remaining points in the morning, if that is OK.
Thank you David. I wasn’t trying to undermine you. I don’t treat comments exchanges as a sort of game. I have plenty of other things to do. I think there is a point about the accessibility of constituencies which impacts the number of activists going to a by-election. Newbury was very accessible. So was Witney. Lewisham actually isn’t as accessible strangely enough (certainly not from the west). I didn’t really want to drive around the M25 car park for three hours to get there so had to invest in a £30 all day travelcard each time.
The point I was trying to make is that I saw what they were doing at Lewisham – the leaflets and the blue envelopes and the canvassing etc, the numbers of young people, the hugeness of the HQ, some people there who had come from Falmouth to stay for a week – and it was extremely impressive and at about the same level as Witney perhaps minus sheer numbers.
So I wasn’t trying to undermine you, to criticise you for not going – in any case with phone canvassing and online donations these days that would be invalid – it was just to say that without actually standing in the HQ and hearing three Risographs going hell for leather and seeing the people who are working their socks off, and seeing the porches with the various leaflets in them and the number of posters up in windows and gardens – it is perhaps rather unfair on the people involved to say that if a simple button had been pressed we would have won.
By the way, one of my visits was relatively early in the campaign and they seem to have got off to a very good start.
I can’t remember clashing with you in the past – I am sorry but all the commenters tend to merge into one after 12 years. I am very grateful that you and Shirley have helped. I am very sorry to give the impression that I was trying to undermine you. It’s just that when you go to a by-election and see the young people and, ahem, mature people like me working their socks off, one gets rather defensive about what seem like invalid conclusions.
At the end of the day, we gave Witney a Witney-level campaign and we didn’t win Witney so why on earth would a Witney style campaign have won it in Lewisham?