We have 72 Members of Parliament, it would be the easiest thing in the world to sit back and be a bit smug for six months. However, that would be a mistake – with the Conservatives hell bent on internal warfare and Labour in a honeymoon period, we are the de facto opposition. Consequently we have to start acting like it. To my mind we succeed where there is local leadership and being blunt, our selection process is unnecessarily slow in getting candidates in place.

Parliamentary Selections – including seats where we are third, should take place in the next 18 months.

The most effective way of electing MPs remains selecting early and embedding those candidates in as genuine local champions, ready to hold their local Member of Parliament to account.

We are second in 27 seats, selecting these seats early will allow us to bed in candidates ahead of time and give us a more realistic chance of building on the incredible gains next time.

However, there are also a large number of seats where we are a good third (15-25% of the vote) and should be challenging for second place in 2029. We know that in these seats, credibility can be a challenge – so equally building our vote in these seats is important too.

Understandably there needs to be some time for reflection – however post 2019 we were far too slow in selecting candidates. We can grow on our success if we have all our target seat candidates and most of our moving forward seat candidates, selected by December 2025.

Large Seat Selections – these should be treated as advanced seats are, or we will not be able to prove what we would do differently.

We have built clusters of victories in seats around Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Hampshire, Gloucestershire and Surrey. This concentration of parliamentary seats should help us win some larger seats such as Mayoralties and Police (Fire) and Crime Commissioners at the next election for those seats.

We have the capacity to win in these areas, the election of Gareth Roberts in the South West GLA seat shows us that we can if we have solid parliamentary and local government infrastructure to help deliver large scale campaigns, we can achieve victories.

However, to date, we have failed to win several Police and Crime Commissioner elections that should have been gains. This is due to a number of factors, however a lack of belief that we can win is a contributing factor.

These seats also give us a high profile position to demonstrate what we would do differently and show that we are a credible force for change against Labour and the Conservatives.

 Therefore we should select earlier and stop treating these roles as an awkward addition to the selection calendar that doesn’t really fit in with the parliamentary timetable and embrace these new opportunities for further Liberal Democrat gains.

Consequently, we should constitute an advanced seat list of winnable large seats and start treating large seats like parliamentary seats of the same nature. Whilst this requires a cultural shift, the fact we have only got two held seats of this nature (South West London and Watford), indicates that they have not been a priority. 

Fourth to second strategy – our growth in parliamentary seats cannot be short term.

With the rise of the Reform Party, we need to realise that we are in a new reality of having (at least in vote share), genuine four party politics.

There are a number of seats where we have come fourth with a respectable share of the vote. North West Norfolk was fourth with nearly 15% is a key example of this.

In 2015, we had seats where we came fourth, for example Chelmsford, throughout the next few elections, we took control of the city council, made gains at county council and elected the fantastic Marie Goldman as a Member of Parliament.

We should adopt a credible strategy in seats like North West Norfolk to help move them from fourth to first over 2-3 elections.

Concluding thoughts

By adopting these three approaches alongside working to retain the 72 fantastic MPs we have, we can build a future in which we become the opposition party, providing a genuinely liberal alternative to Labour.

* Callum Robertson is a teacher and member of the Federal Board. He is a Watford Borough Councillor.