Tag Archives: Mark Pack

The new political landscape

We can – and should and will – continue to celebrate our general election result, and to thank everyone who contributed to it, for a good while yet. As people catch breath after those huge efforts, we also need to start to look to the future political landscape.

We have a mandate from the millions of people who voted for us, we need to work to deliver that mandate. But what difference to that task will the new political landscape make?

That is the question we need to collectively address as we develop our plans for this Parliament.

As we do so, there is an important lesson to bear in mind. It is perhaps the most salutary lesson for anyone involved in politics, particularly in a party in opposition. It comes from looking at the long-run data series from pollsters Ipsos (formerly MORI) asking people which issues are most important to them and to the country.

It is both electorally wise – and fundamentally liberal – to pay attention to what people say matters most to them. We are not paternalists who think we know what is best for others, we are liberals who believe people know best for themselves.

As the Ipsos series uses an open ended question, and so caters for changing terminology and focus over the years (e.g. from European Community to EEC to European Union to Brexit), it provides a good insight into how and when the public’s concerns change.

The salutary lesson? You can certainly see people’s concerns change as events happen, such as rising inflation driving cost of living concerns up. You can also, to a degree, see the impact that a sustained focus on a policy area by the government can make, such as – although spectacularly unsuccessfully as their landslide defeat showed – by the last Conservative government on immigration.

But for the main opposition party, let alone for a smaller one? It is very hard to spot much scope to shift the public’s agenda. Rather, the real political skill comes from leaning into that reality, instead finding the overlap between a party’s values and the public’s interests – and concentrating on that.

It is what we did so successfully in the last Parliament, focusing in particular on health and social care and on the cost of living.

It is also why we need to be open-minded, and ready to be flexible, about how that issues landscape will change during this new Parliament. How long the government’s (limited) political honeymoon will last, how the next leader of the opposition performs and how events influence what matters most to people: those will all set the landscape in which we then need to find the best route to continue to grow and win more elections.

Which means that this early in the Parliament the important strategic issues for the party are about how we deliver the mandate on which our MPs were elected, and how to keep our options beyond that open as we see the new landscape develop – and how to continue to grow our grassroots organisation so that we can make the most of the opportunities that will come.

A change of Prime Minister in Downing Street has not taken away the rationale for concentrating on NHS and social care, the cost of living and sewage in particular. Those are all challenges that still need addressing. Our MPs got elected on that platform: they both have a mandate for action on that platform – and it is important that we show voters that those are the issues we still care about.

Plus of course health, and social care in particular, are the issues that Ed Davey is closely associated with, has expertise in and were at the heart of his and our general election message.

The gains at that general election in our target seats were only the most eye-catching part of growing our grassroots strength. Alongside that we made gains on a much broader scale in local elections through the last Parliament, making net gains in fact in every round of local elections and now running more councils with a Lib Dem majority than before we went into coalition in 2010.

With a Labour government now in Westminster, and so many of our second places at general elections now first places leaving us with relatively few second placed seats, it is a new set of challenges to keep that growth going over the next five years.

But as we have shown in the last five, when we set our minds to it, we can achieve so much together.

General election review

One important post-election task for the Board is setting up a general election review. This should be a happier affair than our 2019 review, but it is still important.

Much of our success in the last Westminster Parliament came from our willingness to learn from what had and had not worked for the party in 2019, and to change as a result. It would be foolish and complacent to assume that we have now maxed out all the progress we can make. We need to discover our next set of lessons, which is where this review comes in.

The review is being chaired by Tim Farron and the other members of the review team are Ade Adeyemo, Paul Farthing , Donna Harris, Emma Holland-Lindsay, Mike O’Carroll and Sally Pattle. The team brings extensive experience from different perspectives, and is also made up of people who were not key decision makers on the campaign itself, so that they can properly evaluate – and hold to account – those who were.

The review has been asked to report by the end of the year, so that if there are any recommendations that need to come to Conference they can be submitted for Spring next year (subject of course to Federal Conference Committee’s decisions on the agenda). Thank you also to FCC for providing time at the Autumn Conference for the review to get feedback.

This timetable combines the need to have enough time to do a proper review, consulting with members, with moving quickly enough that related important decisions, such as over target seats, do not get unduly delayed in this Parliament.

Watch out for opportunities to submit your views to the review, including at our Autumn Federal Conference in Brighton.

Financial plans

We have a chance this May to achieve something we’ve only ever managed twice before in our party’s entire history: make it five rounds of local election net gains in a row.

We should be excited about that possibility. Not only for reasons of psephology but also for reasons of power.

Every gain we make will mean more people benefiting from Liberal Democrats in office, and every gain we make will mean more opportunity to turn our policies into action.

Policies such as the great record in Eastleigh of building new houses – and keeping on winning elections.

To keep our run of local election gains going in May we need two things: candidates and teams to help them. The last time this round of seats were up for election, our calculations show that we missed out on several hundred (yes, hundred) further gains because we didn’t have enough candidates in winnable territory.

Centrally, the party is doing more to publicise the opportunities to be a candidate and to encourage more people to think about i., (The data from these surveys ends up in Lighthouse so it’s available to all local parties.)

But nothing quite beats the in person conversation, the chat over coffee, to help more people realise what a great candidate and councillor they would be. 

That’s particularly important for potential candidates for under-represented groups, who can need that extra encouragement that our party is a welcoming home for them.

Then we need to get our candidates elected, which is where help from people who don’t have local elections in their own area can be so important. Going to help in person or picking up the phone to make some calls makes the difference in close contests.

If you can help with either of these tasks, please do. There’s also a wide range of free training available to help you make the most of these opportunities.

Working together, we can get more Liberal Democrats elected and get more things done such as turning a disused rubbish tip bequeathed by a Conservative-run council into a successful solar farm, helping our planet and generating income to pay for high quality local services.

The paradox at the heart of British politics

Alongside that local picture, there’s a paradox in our national politics we also need to navigate our way through.

The public increasingly views Brexit negatively. The headline figures show a slow but sustained, long-term trend.

Some of this change comes from long-term demographic trends as those joining the adult population are overall much more pro-European than the average. Some of it too comes from people changing their minds – although much of that is a churn to/from don’t know.

In fact, when YouGov recently asked about how people would vote in a new referendum, there was only a net 1.5% of people switching direct all the way from Leave to Remain. Moreover, those increasing pro-European views are also often quite soft. Put simply, the more that the possible conditions of Britain rejoining the EU are mentioned, the further support drops.

Even so, the overall trends are clearly headed in the right direction given our pro-Europeanism. Yet there is a paradox here. Because while public opinion is increasingly negative about Brexit, public opinion is even more strongly of the view that the most important issues to people, their families and to the country are other topics.

Different pollsters ask these questions in different ways, but the pattern of answers is similar. That pattern matters because, as the last general election showed, however much we might wish the election to be about one issue, in a democracy the voters get to choose what an election is about – and they can choose to make it about something else.

Today the most important issues are the economy, cost of living and health services. These affect people directly, now, in very practical and obvious ways.

Many people face big waits for a GP appointment, can’t get on an NHS dentist waiting list, worry about ambulance times if things do go wrong, and millions are stuck on waiting lists.

Overwhelmingly, the public wants to hear those who seek to lead them concentrating on these issues. Talking about other issues instead can feel at best like missing the point and at worst disrespectful to the immediate pressures and worries they face.

The way to show these voters we understand their lives is to talk about the economy, the NHS, practical issues in their area affecting their lives, and the underlying sense of being taken for granted by the Conservatives.

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