Helping spread our strength across the country
Thank you…
It is always good to start with thanking colleagues, and this month marked the final full council for Gareth Morgan. He has served an amazing 52 (!) years as a councillor, having been first elected to then Montgomery County Council in 1973 as a Liberal.
Given all the political ups and downs for our party and its predecessors in the years since, that is a particularly impressive run. It is also a run that enabled Gareth to do so much good for local residents’ and for promoting our values.
Thank you, Gareth.
I suspect that may be the longest continuous run for any Liberal Democrat in elected public office. Though do let me know if anyone can top that!
The importance of earlier Parliamentary selections
New analysis of our campaign data from the last Parliament shows the benefit of getting Parliamentary candidates in place, not only in our target seats but also more widely too:
In the last Parliament, only around a third of seats got the opportunity to benefit from the increase in activity that the selection of a Parliamentary candidate brings. That is because the rest had candidates appointed right up towards the end of the Parliament.
It would be unreasonable and impractical, of course, to expect people to be candidates in non-target seats for as long as if they were in a target seat. But as these figures show, the more seats that can select a good time before the election, the more we can boost the building up of our grassroots campaign strength across the whole country.
Doing that would build on the two important boosts that the rounds of May elections give to the breadth of our strength. I reported last time on how our spread of candidates in the May election was our best showing compared to Labour and the Conservatives since 2009. Getting the Liberal Democrats on more of the ballot papers that are seen by all voters is part of building that national presence.
So too is winning more council seats, and again there is good news from the May elections. Although some of our most dramatic headline grabbing gains were in Southern England, there was good news across the rest of the country too, including winning control of a county council in the Midlands for the first time ever (Shropshire). Overall, we gained seats in 18 of the council areas that were up for election, held steady in three and went down by 1 seat each in two areas.
That was much more than only doing well in areas with Liberal Democrat MPs, though of course doing well in those is important for firmly embedding those record gains from last year.
Of the council seats up for election in areas with Liberal Democrat MPs, we won 69% of them. By contrast, the Conservatives only won 37% of the seats up in their MPs’ constituencies, and Labour was down at 10%.
Just under half of the seats we won were in areas with Lib Dem MPs, and the other half elsewhere - a neat statistical coincidence that shows the importance of both doubling down on MP incumbency and growing more broadly.
This point leads on of course to what will be happening with our Parliamentary selection processes in this Parliament. Both the Scottish and Welsh parties are proceeding with their parts of plans to implement the F10 motion on candidates that was passed at our Spring Federal Conference.
Caroline Pidgeon, chair of the English Liberal Democrats, sent out the following email following the English Party’s own discussions:
Last night we held a meeting of English Council, with around 140 members representing each region and the English Young Liberals.
On the agenda was a debate and vote on implementing Motion F10 from our Spring Federal Conference, which was a constitutional amendment that had been passed in March by around four to one. It set out to implement the recommendations from the party’s General Election Review, to move towards a different structure, linked much more with our General Election planning cycle and creating parity between the three states - England, Wales and Scotland.
Last night’s English Council meeting considered a motion to give the English Party’s assent to those changes, by amending our constitution. The motion was supported by a clear majority of English Council representatives (80 votes to 53). However, this was 9 votes short of the two-thirds majority that it required under our rules to amend the constitution.
This means that across these two votes at both Federal Conference and English Council there is a clear desire for change from members of the party in England, but also that the specific proposals put forward last night did not secure sufficient support to proceed immediately.
Since last night's meeting I have been contacted by many members, wanting clarity about the next steps. Given the clearly expressed desire for change, this issue is not going to disappear. I want to reassure you that as the Chair of the Liberal Democrats in England, I will be speaking with others about an appropriate way forward to find a suitable and acceptable solution that allows for the clear views of the wider membership and English Council to be respected, but that also addresses the outstanding concerns raised at English Council. This will take a few weeks to consider and reflect.
I will also be reflecting on some of the behaviour by a handful of members last night which was not acceptable, and consider the appropriate steps to take to restore a sense of decency and professionalism at our meetings. Staff and members have a right to carry out their roles in a safe environment.
I will keep you informed of developments.
Thank you for all the work you do for the party.
Having been at the meeting too and directly seen the behaviour Caroline refers to myself, I fully agree with her on that. Our 2024 general election review was the first for a long time not to have to report major complaints from staff about how they had been treated by party bodies in preceding years. We absolutely must not slip back on treating staff well or in expecting professionalism from how people run the party on behalf of members.
And then there were 76
As various hung councils have picked their new administrations, an amazing 76 councils now have a Liberal Democrat Council Leader. Lib Dem administrations are now responsible for £17 billion of public spending.
Reform Watch
As reported by The Guardian:
The Liberal Democrats have set up an internal “Reform watch” system to monitor Nigel Farage’s party in local government, with Ed Davey saying Labour and the Conservatives are too scared of the threat from Reform to hold it to account…
It is being spearheaded by Amanda Hopgood, the leader of the opposition group in the Reform-run County Durham, along with Antony Hook, who performs the same role in Kent, and Mike Ross, the leader of Hull city council, who came second to Reform’s Luke Campbell to be mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire.
Congratulations to…
Thank you also for the fabulous efforts put in by the local parties who were the top recruiters in the last month:
- England: Waverley (again!)
- Scotland: North Edinburgh, East & Leith
- Wales: Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe tied with Bangor Aberconwy
A reminder if you are recruiting members locally: if you use libdems.org.uk/join-local then your local party will get extra payment to recognise the local recruitment. (If someone joins via another route, you can also get the membership team to tag them as a local recruit by emailing help@libdems.org.uk).
Conference registration is live
Registration has opened for our September Federal Conference in Bournemouth (20-23 September). You can register to attend in person or online. Details here.
Registration options include a brand-new Day Pass for Autumn Conference that includes both voting and speaking rights, replacing the old non-voting Day Visitor option.
Other party matters
Following feedback after our previous decision on this, the Federal Board decided to set the expense limit for the next President and Vice President all-member elections at £20,000, rather than the £25,000 figure chosen previously.
We also agreed the bundle of business we will submit to the Autumn Federal Conference, which will include proposed members of the Federal Appeals Panel (FAP), something that comes up every five years, the usual motion on membership subscriptions (which will not propose any changes in the minimum membership rate or related figures) and a constitutional tidy-up amendment.
During the last Westminster Parliament, the Federal Board focused on several specific areas of reform and improvement, submitting appropriate constitutional amendments. But one task left over from that is a general tidying up of small ambiguities, consequential changes from previous decisions that were overlooked at the time, and so on.
The best time for such tidying up is an autumn conference early in a Parliament (i.e. when the pressure on conference time is lower than at Spring or later in a Parliament).
Therefore the Board intends to submit a tidying up amendment to Autumn. The intent is to avoid controversial items, which should be for their own separate, dedicated debates.
A draft list of items to include has been published and feedback on these - and in particular on any suggested additions to the list - is very welcome.
A new party HQ
The May Board meeting also agreed plans to move our London HQ to a new location also near to Parliament. The building we are in (1 Vincent Square) has changed owners and is being turned into residential property. (Just as our old 4 Cowley Street HQ ended up a residential property!) We therefore have the chance to move on very good financial terms to a new property later this year.
Watch out for more details in due course, and as before there will be post forwarding arrangements etc. to cater for materials out there with the old address on.
Do you have questions on any of this report, or other Lib Dem matters? Then please drop me a line on president@libdems.org.uk. Do also get in touch if you would like to invite me to do a Zoom call with your local party or party body.