In an Essex district, three excellent candidates stood for election to the county council. Two were experienced councillors, one Labour, one Conservative, well-known, well-liked, well-dug-in to their communities and having done plenty for those communities. One was a Liberal Democrat challenger in a division where the sitting Conservative was standing down. This candidate too was highly popular, a district councillor who had accomplished much.
All three lost to Reform. The Reform candidates were unknowns. Their party did not think fit to tell the voters anything about them. They did little locally. Whereas those three losing candidates all ran campaigns highlighting genuine local issues, Reform’s nationally-posted literature had nothing local to say except that the county council’s finances were in a mess; and I would bet that with the slightest of adjustments, they could have deleted “Essex”, inserted “West Sussex” – and probably did.
All three non-Reform candidates were satisfied to highly encouraged by their canvassing and by informal reactions. To experienced campaigners, it looked good.
It wasn’t. Why the mismatch?
At the same time, in a Labour-dominated London Borough, where the then Liberal Party (including myself) broke through in 1982, but Labour later re-established their dominance, the Greens make a spectacular breakthrough. Both the wards where we broke through in 1982 went Green.
What is happening?
Undoubtedly, the two-party system is breaking – no, broken. The causes of decline in the Conservatives and Labour are several and not all inevitable – for example, the Conservatives’ lemming-rush since 2015 to populist intolerance to the point of idiocy; and Labour’s choice of a leader peculiarly incapable of passion or vision. What of the Liberal Democrats?
That we continue to make net gains of council seats year on year is remarkable, but there has been no breakthrough of poll ratings and current performance hardly suggests a three-figure number of MPs after the next election. Consider three places: Stockport, Preston, Lincoln. What do they have in common? As far as I can see, they’re the only places in England outside the south where we made progress on May 7th – and that progress was modest. In Hull and Sheffield we sustained losses. Nearly all our gains have been in southern areas – though not necessarily districts – where we’re already strong. Except to some extent in Scotland, in places where a directionless Labour government struggles and the Conservatives are bogged down, we present no challenge. That comes from the Greens (as in Waltham Forest or Manchester Gorton) or Reform. In Southwark, one of the few places where we might think of winning a parliamentary seat from Labour next time round, and where a determined Liberal Democrat group has survived in opposition, we gained just one seat – and were overtaken by the Greens who now have 22 seats to our 12.
It would not be so bad if there were any sign of concern at leadership level. But the attitude seems to be that if we prosper in Surrey and Somerset, we do not need Southwark or Sheffield. Even Mark Pack, who so strongly influenced the Party’s direction up to 2025, is pointing out that modest progress made in “weak” areas has been balanced by reverses.
As for Labour, they’re paying the price for being elected in 2024 for no better reason than being the most plausible alternative to the Tories and for trying to lead the country through an unavoidably difficult period with a leader incapable of communicating passion or vision.
For the Tories, there are any number of reasons for failure, but most of all, it’s just too soon after their governments failed wretchedly and disgraced themselves.
However, I believe the causes of the rush to Reform (and to a lesser extent the Greens) are deeper, go back some way and implicate us as well as Labour. I hope to explore them in a later LDV post.
* Simon Banks is an activist in Tendring, North-east Essex, and former council group leader, Waltham Forest.
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32 Comments
There is so much complacency. Nationally we are going backwards. HQ and the leadership merit a firm shaking. Heaven help us once the Tories get their act fully together and they will. 2027 locals could be a disaster.
There is a new article out by YouGov who polled 2026 voters about who they voted for and why.
It shows that when asked why people voted the way they did, the Lib Dems rank lowest of all major parties for “Best represents my values” and highest for “To stop party that I dislike”.
To me, that’s a very fragile base to build from….
https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54811-labours-voter-coalition-broke-more-to-left-than-right-at-2026-local-elections
Thanks for the link Nick Baird.
Surprise surprise! We rank lowest for “Best represents my values”.
That’s simple – we don’t tell people what our values are! We don’t tell them what “Liberal” means as a philosophy for UK society! Not exactly rocket science is it?
There was a rather pithy comment by Jon Sopel on the News Agents podcast last week. I don’t remember the exact words but it echoed Nick’s comment – essentially, we used to do well in local elections whenever the government of the day was unpopular and would forever translate that into talk of a breakthrough nationally, only to to find ours was just a protest vote. When I heard him say this I was angry, thinking of all the great things we have achieved running councils that were being dismissed so glibly, but he has a point. Unless we can articulate a vision of what we stand for (the Leader’s prime task according to Dorothy Thornhill’s 2019 review) we are too often the ‘none of the above’ vote, and that has now been usurped by RefUK and the Greens.
Something I’m not hearing commented on enough is that, although they two party system is fracturing, the framing in people’s heads is still binary: it’s a two-culture system, modelled on the two-party system (and, tbh, its a folk version of the the BBC’s, ‘look we achieved balance by getting two speakers from directly opposed thought-traditions to shout at each other).
This isn’t really at home to political thought that is based around compromise, syncretism or around a model of the political spectrum with more than two poles in it.
The risk is, if the two-culture concept is not repaced by something else, although it would take some time, we could eventually by this route replace the Labour-Party two-party system with a Green-Reform one, without genuinely moving to multi-party politics, and what looks like a break up of the two-party system will just end up being a dirsuption like what happened in the 1880s and 1920s, before a reset and re-solidification. As the Who said, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Can (and how can) Lib Dems challenge the rise of both Reform and the Greens, without falling into rhetoric and narratives that affirms the ‘two-culture’ narrative, left-liberal-progressives against right-authoritarian-conservatives?
I’m absolutely certain that the politics of [Red~Blue + an occasional side of Orange] is over. In fact RB+O is now viewed by dissatisfied voters as a cynical Uni-party, that has willfully suppressed voters wishes for half a century. Constantly offered “change” but given false RB+O promises over too many years, has left them feeling cheated and very angry. Those “cheated” voters are moving away from legacy RB+O, towards the extreme Left and extreme Right. At this point, those disgruntled voters just don’t know if Extr. Left or Extr. Right have the answers, but what they DO know, for certain, is that years of RB+O has NOT provided the answers, and has failed them badly. Those dissatisfied voters are in *revolutionary-mode*, and they intend to rattle the Westminster RB+O cage until something breaks. Oddly, I don’t think they much care what breaks, as long as the legacy RB+O *log-jam* shatters.
What I’ve outlined is the new *enraged* political landscape up to the next GE. I have no idea which extreme *polarity* will win out, but I do know that 2030 will be ugly and unrecognisable, and for the sake of my children and grandchildren I wish I was wrong.
I do agree with much of what is being said about our current lack of ‘cut through’ or of a clear national image.
But we shouldn’t go too far in rewriting past electoral history. As well as performing strongly in local government in the past we also had a series of record breaking General Election results. 1997, 2001 and 2005 all saw successive ‘record best’ results since 1923. In 2005 we even broke out of almost entirely being based on winning Conservative seats and took a historic record 11 seats from Labour.
Following the December 2007 Leadership contest we took a different route and we all know how that ended. But in 2024 we achieved a fourth ‘record best’ since 1923, although much more tightly concentrated in affluent southern areas than ever before.
Since Labour replaced the Liberal Party in 1923 no other challenger Party has done as well nationally as the Liberal Democrats. Although the SNP dominance in Scotland over recent years is a more localised comparator. There the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats (national Coalition) had all trashed their brand, leaving a void that the SNP after many decades as a small fringe Party were able to fill.
The GE in 2028/29 could see a replay on a UK wide scale since both Lab and Con have, simultaneously, further trashed their brands over recent years. If it does it will be the biggest turnaround in over a century. A Party with 72 MP’s should be able to make a lot more noise over the next 2 or 3 years than those with only 4 or 5 each. Why we are not doing so is the question which our Leadership do not seem to be willing to engage with.
However, dreams of sweeping into power if only we are ‘radical enough’ can be delusional. As in 2019 when the Leadership apparently believed we could win 218 seats and lead an anti Brexit Coalition Government. In fact of course our number of seats fell to 11 from an already appalling post Coalition 12.
Maybe the voters just prefer Reform’s general worldview?
Which could also be rephrased as:
Maybe the voters just prefer Reform’s values?
@ Slamdac “Maybe the voters just prefer Reform’s values ?”
According to the latest IPSOS poll 75% don’t.
In my area Reform swept into power.. Their only challenger were the Green Party who sent out leaflets and visited homes.. I saw no LD, Conservative, Labour or Reform literature nor did any other candidate canvass me in person…
However Reform won..
” The Second Coming” By W.B. Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Expats Then the best must have passionate intensity. How do we do that?
What do Stockport, Preston and Lincoln all have in common?
They all have first-rate campaigners – current or former ALDC employees – running the operation.
To be fair, the gains in Stockport came primarily within our two held parliamentary seats – wealthy Manchester commuter territory – and the demographic profile of both bears a strong resemblance to our much-maligned new heartlands in the Surrey stockbroker belt.
The remarkable progress in Lincoln – going from no councillors at all before May 2021 to main opposition in 2026 and the prospect of supplying the Leader in a joint administration after 2027 – is almost entirely down to Lincoln native Darryl Smalley, election agent Andrew Hollyer and Darryl’s remarkable mother, Clare.
nigel hunter 21st May ’26 – 9:26pm…Expats Then the best must have passionate intensity. How do we do that?..
Stop doing silly stunts; the humour ran out ages ago…
Put forward radical proposals in line with liberal ideas and values; the Greens managed it without half the ‘expertise’ of this party..
and STOP DOING SILLY STUNTS!
The planet is on the highway to hell. The US, Russia, China, India and Israel are led by psychopaths. And the UK is skint.
Reasonable people and political groups find it virtually impossible to summon up “passionate intensity” under such circumstances. The “worst” are those people who can achieve “passionate intensity”, which they generally do by first convincing themselves of a megalomaniac delusion.
Racist parties achieve this by convincing themselves that the answer to all the problems is to scapegoat and demonise the outsider. This, when done “moderately”, fails to satisfy or to put anything right. Hence the need for racist parties is to progress from petty discrimination towards mass expulsion and yes, a “final solution”.
Others delude themselves, as Liz Truss, the Greens, and to a large extent Burnham are doing, by convincing themselves that only they have a sufficiently radical solution. As in French revolutionary politics, this risks the continuous overthrow of “moderates” by “revolutionaries”, and the eventual emergence of psychopathic dictatorship.
Sorry, there just doesn’t seem to be a positive way forward right now.
David, I don’t have difficulty myself in feeling ‘passionate intensity’ about our Liberal values, spelled out in the Preamble to our Constitution (“Fair, free and open society in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity”}, or in the proud history of our Liberal party over more than 130 years, or in my own knowledge of how we have all sought the good of our country and the world over the last 60 years. I am proud that we now have 72 MPs and hundreds of councillors working hard for our values and multiple good policies, and that our Leader raised first in PMQs this week the necessity of not diminishing foreign aid to the poorest countries of the world despite our agreement with enhanced defence spending.
And, by the way, David, there are excellent examples currently of governments maintaining Liberal democracies, in the Commonwealth countries of Canada and Australia as well as our own.
Katharine,
Passionate commitment to Liberal values makes sense. Passionate belief that either the Lib Dems or anybody else can find practical policies that will overcome the current massive public disillusion with UK politics – not so much.
You mention one specific policy proposal, to maintain foreign aid spending while increasing defence spending. That of course means either higher borrowing or higher taxes. I don’t hear the Lib Dems shouting from the rooftops about either of these things.
The Greens, by contrast, put “passionate intensity” ahead of recognising real-world constraints. It wins votes. Whether it makes any sort of viable programme for government is quite another question.
What about bringing together Green ambition and Lib Dem realism? It could be called “coalition”. Now there’s an idea….
The boss of Standard Chartered Bank, Bill Winters, is reported to have apologised after describing employees whose jobs are vulnerable to being replaced by Artificial Intelligence (AI) as “lower value human capital”.
I do hope Sir Ed Davey will pick up this comment as symptomatic of much that is wrong with current society and the way things are run by those that run it.
David Allen: we have plenty of useful policies, and will continue to update them and produce relevant ones. As to aid and defence, at the moment we have only asked for the present measly aid commitment to be continued. Taxation policy is something the party should consider further, but we are not lacking ideas – some of them maybe from Richard Murphy, and why not.
Writing my comment above brought home to me how shallow and fanciful are the ideas of both Reform and the Greens, not rooted as ours are in the continuing work of generations. As for the Tories, though having a lengthy history, the ease with which several of their former Cabinet colleagues have ditched their values and policies to move to Reform shows how shallow-rooted those must be. And Labour, of course split honourably between various well-held beliefs, is struggling to move forward. Unlike us!
David Allen, I sense your frustration but “ a “final solution” is a little bit *out there* and irrationally rant-ey, don’t you think?.
I have granddaughters, and I worry strongly, that they will encounter migrants who have adopted a 7th Century belief system from their 7th Century country of origin. Its not their fault, that they struggle with a 21st Century belief system, but my serious question, to you is, how do I protect my grand daughters from men with a totally incompatible 7th Century system that sees British girls as not worthy of equality?
@Tom Bailey 22nd May ’26 – 7:34pm….
I have many concerns about what the future holds for my great granddaughters but ‘worrying about them encountering men with 7th century beliefs’ doesn’t feature highly among those concerns..
After all, such men make up a tiny proportion of the already small (<2%) young male Muslim population of the UK..
expats, I’m pleased that your great granddaughters are safe from migrants with a 7th Century mindset, but that security of mind is clearly not universal. Recent voting evidence shows that political parties which ignore those fears or worse: declare people with those fears as racist, are in decline. Parties that take those fears seriously are in the ascendant.
As a thought experiment, is this *non-fear* of overwhelming third world immigration simply a middle class *blindness* to this culture clash? In leafy South suburbs with a [relative] abundance of personal finance & resources, differing cultures can *rub-along*, share and “play nice”, whereas in poorer regions with strained budgets, housing, health and public services, it creates unreasonable competition for limited resources, and thus resentment in the current poorer class of British culture?
For sure, trying to brush aside those genuine fears of accelerated cultural incompatibility, is a big vote loser.
Tom Bailey 23rd May ’26 – 10:58am……..expats, I’m pleased that your great granddaughters are safe from migrants with a 7th Century mindset, but that security of mind is clearly not universal. Recent voting evidence shows that political parties which ignore those fears or worse: declare people with those fears as racist, are in decline. Parties that take those fears seriously are in the ascendant……………………………………For sure, trying to brush aside those genuine fears of accelerated cultural incompatibility, is a big vote loser…………
At least ‘Henny-Penny’ believed that ‘the sky was falling’ when she spread the story.. Reform, Robinson and their tame right wing media know it’s not, but continue with the narrative, careless of the consequences, just as long as it garners voters’ support..
As an aside, do you believe that this party should ‘appeal to the public’ on this narrative?
“As an aside, do you believe that this party should ‘appeal to the public’ on this narrative?”
I believe this party should stand strongly behind its *aggregate Liberal beliefs*, but if voters disagree, it should have the good grace of accepting the democratic result, without the undignified outbursts of “thick, uneducated, bigot, racist, vote again and get it right this time!!” etc., Denigrating voters because they don’t share your world-view is never going to work.
How dim of some people to think misogyny is a 7th century mindset rather than mainstream for the 21st century. The UK age of consent was raised to 16 only in 1885, yet I see post from people claiming child brides are a muslim problem. Our own royal family (please give Andrew his title back to remind people the rot goes to the very top) is not immune. I wouldn’t leave my grandchildren in a room with Donald Trump or convicted stalker of women Tommy Robinson. Personally I know people who’s face book pages are full of protecting ‘our women’ as though they were private property even as they appear in the local paper with bans from contacting their former partners and convictions for domestic violence and assaulting people in the street.
Tom Bailey: “David Allen, I sense your frustration but “ a “final solution” is a little bit *out there* and irrationally rant-ey, don’t you think?”
No, I certainly don’t. People love to comfort themselves with the delusion that Hitler was unique, a one-off, never to be repeated, and certainly not here. In truth, genocide driven by racial conflict is depressingly common. It’s happening now in Palestine, and in “the cradle of European civilisation” in Ukraine. We cannot discount it happening here in Britain. Just as Reform talk about mass expulsions, the Nazis talked about expelling the Jews to Israel. Then they thought of something else they could do instead.
You talk about “migrants with a 7th Century mindset”, conveniently ignoring the fact that “enlightened” white Europeans were drowning “witches” in more recent history. You boast that “Parties that take those fears (of Muslim immigrants) seriously are in the ascendant”. Yes, I understand why you want to deny the blatant dangers of racism.
Caracatus,
How dim is it to see a young mother working in an asylum centre doing a late shift to help feed and care for those 7th Century migrants, and find her journey home on a train ending with a screwdriver plunged 37 times into her neck and brain stem,…. and not seriously consider if our 2 incompatible cultures which are 13 Centuries apart might *never*, have a future that we can endorse in a peaceful UK society we all wish for our children?
Tom Bailey 23rd May ’26 – 11:59am….I believe this party should stand strongly behind its *aggregate Liberal beliefs*, but if voters disagree, it should have the good grace of accepting the democratic result, without the undignified outbursts of “thick, uneducated, bigot, racist, vote again and get it right this time!!” etc., Denigrating voters because they don’t share your world-view is never going to work…..
I was not denigrating voters, neither did I use any of the labels (‘thick’, etc.) that you use..
I merely suggested that a strong fear of our granddaughters ‘meeting’ men with a 7th Century mindset on women’ is not based on any rational facts; they are almost infinitely more likely to have problems with their contemporaries.
As for the ‘voters disagreeing with the values of this party’, I do not accept that we should adopt the “Marx” (Groucho not Karl) view on principles..
The problem with Reform is avoiding Complacency ( Protest Votes) & Panic. We don’t know who will win The By-election but we do know that Reform were in steady decline up to The Local Elections, roughly 8% down over 7 Months. Since May 7th The Reform Polling has been flat, some Polls up, some down, some up then down.
All the evidence suggests long-term decline for The Far-Right, even success in Makerfield would only delay that.
Tom Bailey: Completely missing the point that those “7th century” values are just as easily found in natively British (mostly) men who hypocritically weaponise women’s rights against migrants.
Katharine: the issue is not whether we have lots of good policies, it’s whether they form a coherent whole, whether we can summarise for people what we’re about and whether we can persuade them.
Paul: In 2019 all sorts of things were wrong with our campaign. It wasn’t especially a radical campaign: it was a campaign focussed on the EU and on Jo Swinson. It might have worked, but the leadership team was an echo chamber and the targeting was fantasy land. Yes. since then we’ve been very successful in terms of local and national seats won, but on a narrow base of membership, committed voters and geography – and to some extent social class. The 2026 local elections may be the point at which the juggernaut is about to grind to a halt. A clearer definition of what we’re about, such as Paddy Ashdown substantially achieved, should be radical, but need not be scarily so.
I note that virtually all the comments have focussed entirely on the Lib Dem performance as against Greens and Reform. I started by pointing out that whatever went wrong, affected Labour and Tories too. I have some ideas about underlying causes in which the whole political establishment is complicit and, LDV willing, I’ll come back to that.