Our party is in desperate need of reform.
We have overlooked the importance of winning locally. We have sacrificed our local government strongholds on the altar of national government dreams.
In doing so, we have carelessly damaged our local government base in many areas. We have assumed we can win new MPs without winning locally first. The 2019 election shows that we can’t.
As has been said in the 2019 General Election Review: ‘The overarching conclusion … is that had we made much better decisions in 2019 we might have gained a few more seats, but not many more.’
Part of this is that we hadn’t rebuilt enough support locally to win nationally.
For too long we have given priority to Westminster, its national policy interests and the messaging that goes with it.
We need to shift resources to empower local parties to win in their areas. We should become the true champions of localism, and rebuild our local government base.
Local campaigns should never be in a position where leaflets from HQ loses them votes. Our local parties should be helped by central party, not at loggerheads with them.
We must become an insurgent party again. To be liberal is to challenge established thinking, to be bold, open to new ideas and unconventional thinking.
We shouldn’t do things just because that’s the way we’ve always done them.
We must also value differences of opinion and be confident in our diversity.
One size doesn’t fit all. There is a challenge to have an overarching national message about who we are and what we stand for as Liberal Democrats, whilst leaving enough flexibility to local parties to shape their own messages.
Our centralised structures mean we are late adopters. We need to be the opposite and unleash the ideas from the bottom up.
We will never be a party with large teams of paid researchers drafting detailed policy documents. But we are the party of local Lib Dems doing new and exciting liberal things.
Our structures need to change to support much more bottom up campaigning.
We need to improve our digital offer, not just centrally, but locally. We should have regional campaigning hubs that support local parties, taking the pressure off HQ.
I would also move HQ functions that do not need to be in Westminster to a northern city with direct rail links to London.
The General Election Review recommendations deal particularly with the responsibilities of the three top positions: the President, the Chief Executive and the Leader. All these positions are in London, but my vision is to unlock the potential of Lib Dems at the grassroots.
We are champions of devolution. Let’s apply it fully to our party.
We must also strengthen the links between national councillor groups like the Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors with our regional parties to better connect council groups and party campaigners with each other.
By embracing a bottom up approach, we have a much better chance to become a nimble early-adopting insurgent force attractive to voters at a local level across every constituency.
We need to build our local strongholds, door by door, street by street and ward by ward.
Concentrating on our local successes will hand us back the widespread national support, from which we can win seats in Westminster.
* Wera Hobhouse is the Liberal Democrat MP for Bath and Vice-Chair of the Environment APPG.
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5 Comments
My assessment is that if we had not accepted a role in coalition we would have lost many seats in the ensuing election, but not as many as we did. We would have been an obvious target for blame, but we would have been able to maintain local strengths better. There is an argument that we should set out a position that makes involvement with either of the largest parties practicably impossible. After all we no longer have to prove we can govern, moreover the imminent economic and social difficulties facing the UK would subject the party to a further comprehensive battering.
Wera’s thesis does not always stand up. I can see from the perspective of Bath why she comes to her conclusion. I know Cheltenham much better; those who follow LDV will knew that Max Wilkinson is a worthy successor to Martin Horwood, yet despite a very strong local party infrastructure and dominant on the town council, we were unable to win back sufficient Conservative voters.
Moving HQ away from Westminster and most government departments is likely to make the party even less responsive to events, though strengthening regional structures is highly important. The problem is that with a threadbare presence in many constituencies there is no bottom to ‘bottom up’, making a more central control an inevitable back stop.
Devolution or rather a self-regulating balance between local, national and pan-national governance is key to Liberalism. I wish Wera had spelled out her understanding of this in the article.
This is a constructive piece from Wera.
I agree with a lot of the ideas or stance of it. The party does need reform. The priorities are sensible.
The issue wera needs to think about, is, as someone particularly pro Eu, she, not me, I mean, how does the forceful message on Brexit, fit, with a localist direction?
If this party has too much top down on policy, why do party members now saddle the party with policy on conscience issues?
If our party is going to pitch to Devon, it must not alienate those moderately suspicious of the EU. If it is to appeal to Catholics with a social conscience, it must not put them off reflecting their religious conscience, on, say, the right to life, based on a lower number of weeks, which mps must vote on as individuals.
We are increasingly referencing the left of the USA, and the Democrats. I think we might do well to, on some things, also, reference the politics of President Kennedy, and volunteerism, excitement of being involved in politics, and indeed those often common sense traits of Charles Kennedy.
The greatest example of the leader we never fully had, is Shirley Williams. She never alienated. We must see local as central, no pun intended, but so also, is sensible.
To me this is a breathe of fresh air.
We need to ensure that having a decentralised party should include recognising that the members are the party. We need to try methods of actually involving members in a real sense in the decisions that are being made.
The internet should be a very useful tool. I have to admit that I do not really know a great deal about how one can use the internet. I remember when I went on a course about computers and we were invited to prepare cards which could be used as punched cards for an overnight run on a computer. Things have changed since then, but I find it hard to think in terms of modern technology.
The Party faces an existential crisis. General Elections are not just very big Local Elections. Vision strategy and a plan are essential ingrdients to success. Leadership is about messaging the vision and the plan. Localism is vital (Think Global Act Local). Forget Left/Right – 20th century legacy – Change the paradigm. Stop talking, start acting. Provide the electors’ solution to government – akin to client/business relationship i.e. address peoples’ governance need and wants – political provider of choice. Stop undermining our democratic and liberal principals by making the Party fully democratic (all to vote not just those at conference and sitting on committees) and stop debating “equality” issues and become instinctively inclusive rather than constantly boring the pants off the electorate – be colour, gender etc BLIND! I have more if asked!
It appears that we have (had) a Head Office that does not walk the talk. Incredible – if we don’t execute on our values then who will?