How many people reading this article have been sat at a house party in the north – and when the conversation gets onto politics (which it usually does), no other attendees know a single thing about the Liberal Democrats. Attendees aged eighteen, nineteen, twenty who have not got a clue about what we stand for, a single policy, except, maybe Davey’s stunts.
I tell them I support the Liberal Democrats, and a true response I once got was, “is that the orange one?”.
This is where we are standing with the youth, and hey, a lot of the older generations too.
I asked myself, ‘why is this?’ Why are we not cutting across while the Greens came from absolutely nowhere and are dominating the conversation? Sure, you may say the charisma of Zack Polanski, but to me, he is just a raving populist – unachievable goals matched with undeliverable promises. Love him or loathe him, it’s as Polanski stands for something distinct, that has led the Greens to craft an identity that has got them into the national conversation.
From this I then came to the conclusion – we have no identity. There is no attempt to create an identity. This is as we are being held hostage by the Tory voters who have lent us their vote – the leadership is too scared to announce a truly bold, a truly liberal policy, in fear of disappointing the southern Tory voters who have voted for us in the last big sets of elections. I may not have the same life experience you have, but I do know not to trust someone to stay with me who went against me for most of their lives.
The leadership does not want to build our own Liberal identity as the majority of our voters are not liberals, just Tories lending us their vote. My thoughts on this are simple, we cannot betray our own true liberal values in an attempt to keep these Tory voters, who I believe will soon leave us due to Badenoch’s rising popularity – this time last year we were polling one or two points from the Conservatives, now the gap has risen.
If we want to win big, have major success, then voters need to know what the Liberal Democrats are. But now, it seems we are simply the ‘Localist Democrats’ rather than any strong identity of liberalism.
Take the Online Safety Act – the party only lightly opposed it, an act, according to BBC Verify, resulted in blocking people my age (at the time) from viewing footage from Gaza, clips from the war in Ukraine, even parliamentary debates. The Labour Manifesto pledged to allow 16 and 17-year-olds to vote, which one could argue, denies them access to footage which could encourage one to vote against them. Is this not something liberals should be extremely vocal against and stand against?
Should we as liberals oppose the new social media ban, forcing all users who want to use social media to submit their ID to American companies – such as with the Online Safety Act, should we as liberals not be encouraging parents to parent and oppose the so-called ‘nanny state’ from growing stronger and stronger? Should we as liberals not be advocating for a smaller government? What about being pro-business or pro-individual liberty? What, we announce that we’re moving part of the Treasury to Birmingham and that’s meant to be a ‘grand policy’ that lets voters know who we are?
The party now avoids attempts of conversation on core, key liberal values as well as other policies we used to stand for, what about Trans Rights or cannabis legalisation – topics that liberals are not against due to our support of individual liberty? The party is too fearful of losing the Tory voters who have lent us their vote, rather than standing on these issues and trying to carve our own, liberal identity.
We can celebrate our 72 seats, but sometimes it’s about standing for what you truly believe in instead of results. What good is 72 seats if we do not utilise it correctly? I am not suggesting we lean to the populism so present today, only that we choose to carve our own identity – the liberal way.
* Theo Rodwell is 18 years old living in Merseyside. He is currently a student and has been an active member of the Liberal Democrats for several years.
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22 Comments
You ask a lot of great questions, but my feeling is one of your central ideas is slightly out of kilter.
What we are trying to do in the South is persuade affluent voters that their interests are better served by liberalism than conservatism.
The policies we promoted in 2024 on health and social care returned to our liberal roots and appealed to voters right across the economic spectrum. (We have always been supported by poorer off voters in the South.)
Affluent liberal voters in the South will have no issues with the exciting liberal reforms you suggest.
1. Agree 100%
2. More in Common Poll today has Greens down to 9%, hopefully Polanski’s mad views have resonated
3 Lib Dem performance at P M Q today much improved, very relevant to a 90% of the country, clearly articulated and presented
4. Now the Strategy review which must be conducted openly and not defensively.
Isn’t it time to thank Ed Davey for all he has done for us, but to suggest that he retires in favour of a new leader who can engage in a cutting edge dialogue needed to combat Polanski of the Greens?
No no no no no. You’ve gotten this the wrong way round and are only employing the people responsible for the mess we are in buy accepting their nonsense excuses as valid!
Our seats have always been primarily Tory facing, this was overwhelmingly the case after after 1997. This didn’t stop us from attacking Labour from the left or being the most liberal party, indeed before Labour even got into government our tax policies were clearly to the left of them.
Under Kennedy our rhetoric went further left as well, this did not stop us from winning a record number of Tory facing seats in 2001. We only started to lose ground in subsequent elections when voters started wanting to get rid of labour and put the Tories back in power, something we couldn’t do much about (and even then we held the vast majority).
Also look at the string Green performance in their Tory facing target wards in Suffolk and Sussex, where they’ve succeed despite making themselves far more controversial than the most radical possible version of the our party ever would.
And all this is before you consider the that the electorate has realigned around age and education levels, such that allot of ex Tory seats may never vote for a right wing party again.
The problem is not that our voters are holding us hostage. The problem is we are allowing the party’s direction to be decided by people who have no clue how politics actually works in the real world!
No no no no no. You’ve gotten this completely the wrong way round and are only employing the people responsible for the mess we are in buy accepting their nonsense excuses as valid!
Our seats have always been primarily Tory facing, this was overwhelmingly the case after after 1997. This didn’t stop us from attacking Labour from the left or being the most liberal party, indeed before Labour even got into government our tax policies were clearly to the left of them.
Under Kennedy our rhetoric went further left as well, this did not stop us from winning a record number of Tory facing seats in 2001. We only started to lose ground in subsequent elections when voters started wanting to get rid of labour and put the Tories back in power, something we couldn’t do much about (and even then we held the vast majority).
Also look at the strong Green performance in their Tory facing target wards in Suffolk and Sussex, and they’ve managed to make themselves far more controversial than the most radical possible version of the our party ever would.
And all this is before you consider the that the electorate has realigned around age and education levels, such that allot of ex Tory seats may never vote for a right wing party again.
So problem is not that our voters are holding us hostage. The problem is we are allowing the party’s direction to be decided by people who don’t have a clue how politics actually works in the real world!
* empowering not employing
Whenever I’m out canvassing and find someone considering voting Green, I always ask them why they prefer Green policies over Lib Dem ones. This almost always results in a blank look, because not only do they not know what our policies are, they don’t know anything about Green ones either.
A lot of people are voting on “vibes”. For young people, if they encounter Green campaigners they are more likely to see someone who looks like them i.e. younger than the mainly middle-aged (or older!) Lib Dem campaigner. And Polanski on TV or social media comes across as natural and authentic (even if he’s promising the impossible) whereas too often IMO Lib Dems sound scripted and inauthentic, with honourable exceptions including Ed when he’s on the home turf of caring.
The same could be said of Farage and Reform in many people’s eyes.
If elections were decided purely on policies and values, we’d be absolutely fine. The curse of being a liberal party is that our policies and values are harder to communicate than those of populist parties, who just need to promise simple solutions to complex problems, and find a minority to blame when things go wrong. We however recognise nuance, which puts a huge premium on the ability to communicate.
The social media ban idea is pure performative moral-panic theatre from our technically clueless political class. It is meant to give the appearance of doing something to solve a real problem but actually will not achieve its intended in aims — indeed in many ways it will do the exact opposite of what it’s supposed to, i.e. it will make all of us LESS safe online by forcing people to hand over their personal data to shady US tech companies whenever they want to access interactive web platforms. Don’t blame Shire Tory voters in the Blue Wall (which as @David Le Grice says is a red herring anyway), blame the political culture in which appearances matter more than reality when devising public policy.
I share some of Leo’s concerns expressed by what he says about us being “local Democrats”. In some areas we were successful locally over a decade ago but have gone right down since and one major reason in my experience is because we concentrated there on local and did little or nothing to promote our national and international views.
David le Grice “We only started to lose ground in subsequent elections when voters started wanting to get rid of labour and put the Tories back in power, something we couldn’t do much about (and even then we held the vast majority).” Does this not show that we depend too much on people voting against another party rather than for us and therefore supports to some extent Theo’s point that our soft Tory supporters will return to the Tories because they are not really for us?
Nigel Jones
I think the issue is more that even lib dem seats aren’t immune to voters behaving like we’re in a two party system, Labour took Inverness and Rochdale from us in 1997 for instance. I suppose we are probably more vulnerable to this in Tory facing areas because that’s also how we tend to win them. But but being more right wing and authoritarian wouldn’t help, we’d have had to straight up merge with the Tories or at least form a pre-election pact with them.
But as I say our net loss to the Tories in 2010 was pretty small even then so it’s not like any of that is a huge deal.
However right now if we lose any seats it won’t be out of wanting to replace labour with the Tories, it will be out of wanting to replace them with Reform, something far fewer of them will have an inclination to do. We’re safe in all but four I’d say.
The coalition years did much of the damage in labour facing seats. The Green Party have now moved into that space. Many social liberal policies were jettisoned in that time. The Greens are still ahead of the Lib Dems in the latest yougov poll. I don’t have a problem with state intervention, I support it when it comes to public ownership for water companies, railways etc. Decentralizing power back to communities and giving them a greater say in local issues such as planning fit in nicely with that.
I was with you up to the online safety bill and “Should we as liberals not be advocating for a smaller government? What about being pro-business or pro-individual liberty?”
My answer to those questions are 1/ No and 2/ no thanks.
What you are suggesting is that we return to the politics of the Coalition where we got slaughtered in the 2015 general election. It also led to Brexit, as it was the deprived communities in the Red Wall seats that wanted to shake things up by voting for Brexit.
One of he reasons we have a sewage problem today that the party is benefitting from is that during the Coalition we persued a smaller government by supporting deregulation of the water companies which led to the disaster we have today.
And ironically given the thrust of your article, this was the kind of politics that if it had any appeal at all it would be in the Tory seats that voted for a smaller state (or so they were told).
If you want to win in Merseyside then you need convincing arguments that you can fix the public sector funding crises that we now currently have.
I can tell you what would happen if we tried to imitate the Tories. It happened in 2015. People saw no difference between us and the Tories. Thus, if they were impressed by the Coalition they voted for the larger party. They saw no reason to vote for us instead of the Tories.
When is the party I joined way back in 1961 – now self described as the party of ‘Middle England’ – going to become a radical UK party again ?
Radical progressive policy/radical charismatic Leader needed double quick – or else it’s curtains. Not just Labour that needs a change.
I think more nuance is needed about ‘Tory voters’. Tory voters of 2010-2024 were a diverse coalition of much churn.
There are 3 groups who might be Lib Dem-leaning, and their concerns attract different Lib Dem tribes. Not all of these people live in the South.
1) Post-Cameron Tories who are vaguely economically Thatcherite, accept a role for the State as social referee, but want it cheap, and have liberal/metropolitan values. They appeal to ‘Orange Bookers’. Badenoch’s anti-identity-politics stance and bullish rhetoric is a turnoff for them, but if her party is the ‘free-market’ option, they grudgingly return.
2) old-One-Nation communitarians who are historically-centrist on economics, will consider more state intervention, and are socially conservative/consensualist Some social democrats in the party will find these people talking their language. I don’t know how much Badenoch ‘gets’ these people at all.
3) conservative-localists, who are even more socially/morally conservative, but will do what’s right by their area and distrust Westminster, even though they may be outwardly deferential to authority/tradition. Despite massive disagreements, Lib Dem community-politics enthusiasts will connect with these voters. Badenoch has to go a long way to win them back on localism, but her stances on identity politics and trans rights will attract them.
This article seeming believes in genetic, ‘natural Tories’ whom Lib Dems waste time on delaying their natural return to Badenoch, rather than seeking ‘genetic-progressives’. Please don’t fall for a false modern view that all voters are either ‘sheep’ or ‘goats’.
To be clearer about what I mean: some former Tory voters are not ‘lending’ Lib Dems their votes, the old Tory coalition has broken up, and voters who are pro-social stability, centrist on economics, socially conservative / deferential to the historic social consensus, and not overly open to the sudden shocks and disconnection of aggressive capitalism, or those caused by the imposition of new moralities and social models, are homeless and leaderless and voiceless.
Some of these people were voting Lib Dem anyway and were never (or rarely) Tory voters. Starmer struggles to attract them, although he tries. They are not necessarily Reform fodder either.
I’m not saying they are natural Lib Dems (and it could shatter the Lib Dem coalition to actively compromise with them en masse), but I think you’re dead wrong in assuming they ‘belong’ to Badenoch, who is engaged in refounding her party on a new ideological basis and might even (surprisingly) succeed and prosper in a proportional-voting system.
In a PR or semi-PR system (which Burnham may be about to usher in or at least hint about), these people might be able to coalesce together. It is food for thought. Someone will eventually make this happen.
I feel like parts of this article – perhaps most notably the hypothesis that we are costing ourselves vote share elsewhere trying to hold on to soft Tories (of the 3 types excellently outlined by Matt) are correct – though its policy prescriptions and belief about who which prescriptions appeal to I find more questionable. But what it misses is really that we are adhoc to the FPTP system, as on a vote share thats near half what it was in the 2000s it is critical our vote share is efficient and this is best achieved by appealing to Tory-Lib Dem undecideds in Southern seats rather than chasing after an extra 10% of the vote in areas we are far weaker post-Coalition that will not return additional seats. Until we can force voting reform Southern Tory-Lib Dem undecideds are critical to maximising our foothold in Parliament.
Ben – However, I’d agree with Theo that the pragmatic / cynical policy you outline does need to acknowledge and chew down on the fact that in areas Lib Dems are not targetting, the Greens are hoovering up former Lab/Lib waverers, or people who know nothing about the party at all. As their current strategy is just about brand recognition propagating the false idea that they are the only ‘radical’ party of the left, and seeding future harvests for them to reap in due course.
When I was a Lib Dem (I left), in Bristol we saw our vote collapse and receive nothing helpful in return from HQ. HQ seemed to be baffled about how to counter the Greens, the possibility of them being a threat seemed out of their ken. Most of the party’s current activity beyond trying to cling onto a few secure wards is limited to driving out into the rural areas round about to campaign to retain or win seats that have generally flip-flopped Lib Dem / Tory. So the problem is real, if you’re a Lib Dem.
Me, although I’ve never voted Tory, I’m too socially consensualist and I’d walk over glass before I vote Green in the current smug, puritanical, sectionalist moral-indignationist incarnation.
The party doesn’t have to be held hostage by anyone. It can have whatever policies it likes, it will then be for the voters to decide who to vote for.
I am stunned by the hostility to the green party which indicate to me that Lib Dems just don’t get it. Bristol is mentioned, a City where the Lib Dems had 38 cllr in 2010 compared to 32 for everyone else and now have 5. The greens have 25 and MP and almost a mayor.
i remember when Ed Dave was the main person behind axe the tax (council tax) and the green tax switch – cut income tax by 2p and make the polluters pay. In coalition lib dems went from axe the tax to freeze the tax to destroy their local government base.
Most people have never been strong followers of policy detail but they can get broad based stuff. Anyone mentioning the nanny state and supporting businesses is probably better off in the Conservatives. Supporting businesses these days actually means supporting a wealth tax, supporting a housing system that allows people to move, supporting people having money to invest in their lives and their communities instead of not enough money to pay the bills. As Mrs Thatcher never said, if you want people to stand on their own two feet, stop kicking them in the goolies.
My theory is that the new divide in politics in not left vs right, not libertarian vs authoritarian but between people who see the value of collective action and those who are selfish. For example – covid, most people who opposed lock down did so fundamentally because they objected to the principle that their lives should be affected for the greater good. The same thing happens time and again – should we leave the EU or should we co-operate with other nations? Should we tackle global warming or how dare you suggest I change my behaviour so someone else benefits. Should we care about human rights in Gaza or just ignore it cos it only matters when its me personally. The small boats – protesting about people being kept in hotels (they aren’t hotels, they are hostels) because someone getting something I’m not, even though its not actually something I would actually want. Parts of the UK are no longer Conservative because people can tell from their own evidence that Brexit has made life harder for their firm, that seas and rivers a full of sewage, that housing is unaffordable even with the bank of mum and dad. No wonder education is a better indication of voting intention than class.