I’ve heard the calls a few times now, “if only we’d fought Gorton and Denton”, or “the local party got screwed over by HQ”, but as someone who was there coordinating the local party’s activity in the by-election, some things are a bit overstated.
Not fighting Gorton & Denton was a symptom of the problem that culminated with disappointing results in urban areas (including in my own ward in Manchester) last week, but it wasn’t the cause. The Greens aren’t doing well nationally because of the momentum of the Gorton & Denton win, they won Gorton & Denton because of the momentum they already had, which the win just accelerated.
So let’s set the record straight. The local party was in agreement with HQ – we didn’t want to burn ourselves out fighting a by-election there was no realistic chance of winning. And despite what you may have read in Liberator, there was no fully funded offer to do an election communication to the whole constituency (which would have cost at least an order of magnitude more than the suggested £300!), but instead only a more targeted one which we did do (and despite Liberator claiming HQ ran the election communication, it was actually me who did the work whilst recovering from surgery). There were a few points of friction with HQ (it was true that there was some initial pushback against even the targeted mailing, and I did find some of HQ’s comments on my artworking a bit pedantic), but we successfully made the case for approval from the agent and got on with it. Jackie was a fantastic candidate and I’m proud to have her as a colleague in the local party, and she did the job brilliantly, but she went into it knowing it was not an election we would be fighting to win.
Then when Labour’s NEC blocked Burnham, I was not at all surprised when the leader of Manchester’s Greens mentioned to me in conversation after full council that they were going to throw everything at it now. That was the turning point that convinced them that they could do it, and in the same position I would have felt the same – but we weren’t starting from the same position.
But the dominos that meant Gorton & Denton was a no hoper for us started falling a long time before the Greens chose to fight it, and us choosing not to. Membership is stagnant and even among core activists, enthusiasm is low. But despite a strong council base in Gorton a couple of decades ago, following the coalition era collapse we have now no infrastructure in place to have launched a campaign from. And when it comes to campaigning, nationally we seem to rely heavily on squeeze and tactical voting meaning we can only fight a campaign if we can position ourselves as a contender in a two horse race, which Gorton & Denton was never going to be.
All of these decisions added up that meant by the time Gwynne resigned, we’d essentially ruled ourselves out (which at best may be just an unintentional consequence of our strategy), and that’s not even to speak of the national media framing around the election which wouldn’t have considered us.
So now the most recent domino to fall means that in my ward I now have a Green colleague in the town hall who barely knows the ward and seemed baffled that he’d won when I introduced myself to him after we did our box counts. And this is despite a promise from the Greens not to challenge the wards we had councillors in meaning they did no doorknocking, no delivery, and only a few personal social posts.
So what comes next? Can we stop these dominos falling on the Lib Dems in urban areas, or will we accept our niche is just those less metropolitan areas? As a Lib Dem in the centre of one of those areas unfortunately for me the latter is not an option.
I come very much from the school of thought of “it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission”. The Manchester Lib Dems have never really been ones for sitting around waiting for HQ’s permission to do something, we’ve made our own luck. This can pay off, such as John Leech’s 2005 election victory despite not being on the target list. Certainly as a trans woman in today’s society, I am very used to having to fight against a system that wants to control and limit my identity, and this attitude I carry forward into my response to last week’s locals.
HQ are right to spin this set of locals as a win. Numerically everything is going the right direction, and we need to portray ourselves as having momentum. But inside the party we must be more nuanced and recognise the weaknesses and missed opportunities we now see. I’m told that almost all of the party’s gains came in our held seats, but outside of them, we actually lost ground. This must be a wakeup call. Defence is important, but we must grow too, and we need to figure out what the campaigning strategy looks like to ensure that we can fight campaigns where opportunities for growth are, which must include in progressive, urban areas where people work so hard.
So if the party leadership doubles down on the national message primarily appealing to constituencies we already hold, and neglecting to appeal to the primarily young, progressive voters that Polanski’s brand of politics clearly is, then we’ll have to try and make our own way as liberals in urban areas to figure out how to appeal. But it would be great to have the support of HQ in this process.
Fixing church roofs is great, but for many of the residents in my ward, the church roof is almost at the bottom of the list of things they care about. We need to make sure when it comes to thinking of who is going to help them with their problems, they think of the Lib Dems too.
* Chris Northwood (she/her) is a councillor in Manchester, deputy group leader of the Manchester Liberal Democrats and outgoing member of Federal Council.
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11 Comments
Very helpful to hear the unvarnished truth about this. In the 2000s, we won the votes of “soft Tories” in the well-heeled parts of England and Scotland. We also won the left-wing / academic / metropolitan vote of people angry with Labour – hence our success in local government and Westminster elections in Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff, Sheffield, Newcastle, etc. But even in 2010 there were signs that this was not bearing electoral fruit, with poor results in London and in other Labour-facing target seats.
We have done well to hold the former. The latter vote, cannibalised by the Greens, is now probably gone forever.
As Chris says, a constituency freepost costs thousands of pounds. £300 would barely cover hiring a van to drop it off with the Royal Mail depot!
Why did we do so badly in Manchester even where we were not fighting the Greens? How did Labour retain wards such as Didsbury East?
In Harrow West in 2024, our constituency-wide A4 Freepost cost us £1600.
The Didsbury East question is a good one, one that when we have our washup we’ll be diving into but we have no answers yet!
So now we have Makerfield. It’s probably a worse prospect but burning ourselves out in June is not a problem. There are plenty of people in the party on a high after good results or itching for a fight after bad ones. If we decide to do something worthwhile with the oportunity, people will come to help and donate to an appeal.
The question is what can we do that’s worthwhile. Putting an unknown up as a local champion is going to achieve nothing. They will be seen through by the electorate and abandoned by the party immediately polls close. How about leading on some of the issues that we never mention and trying to get Andy Burnham to commit to a position.
Europe would be a good place to start. We might even get Reform to attack us rather than ignore us.
PR might be another. Labour conference supports it. Parliament voted for it. It would save Labours skin at the next election . Andy Burnham supports it. Let’s see if we can get him to commit to implementing it.
Of course if he made a commitment before nominations, we could agree to give this one a miss.
@Peter Davies
Rumour has it the Greens are considering much the same offer!
There are issues other than burnout that means it won’t surprise me if HQ choose to put up only a paper candidate in Makerfield, including our targeting strategy of only fighting seats we believe we can win, combined with an approach to by elections of relying heavily on squeeze and establishing ourselves as winners in a two horse race, which I don’t think we can credibly do. It’s very clear this will be a “Burnham Vs Reform” battle in the eyes of voters and the media and we’ll be swimming up a waterfall if we fight a campaign that pretends it’s anything else in order to get a look in.
And we’ve had to pick ourselves up and start again in Manchester, without much help from the national party, more than once before. I remember the meeting in an old rectory in Hulme (in 1972, I think) where we refounded the City Party, with almost two dozen of us there. The Manchester Exchange by-election the following year provided a real impetus, in which we threatened Labour – but it still took some time for good community politicians to establish wins ward by ward.
@Chris: thanks for the interesting article.
As a point of fact, as well as in existing LD parliamentary seats, we did well in many Westminster target seats. A score plus of such strong performances. This aspect of the national strategy is working. We need to supplement it, not junk the overall strategy.
Thanks for your elucidation as to what happened, Chris! Frankly, this confirms what I had reason to think actually took place. And the unofficial decision to let the Greens fight to win was absolutely right, as clearly many former Lib Dem voters in the constituency felt the same. I’ve argued elsewhere that it would be self-defeating if we were to stand a Lib Dem candidate in the Makerfield by-election (with the certainty of another lost deposit). But do we really want to see Labour reviving under a successful Burnham leadership? However much I detest the thought of letting Reform win another by-election, that may be the least-worse option to be faced.
Just as Caroline Lucas thinks the Greens shouldn’t put much effort into Makerfield, I think the same should be said of the Liberal Democrats. The choice between Andy Burnham and a Farage stooge is surely clear. It’s in the interests of the country, progressive politics and of the Liberal Democrats that the Reform juggernaut is stopped, and that can only be done this time by Burnham.