Les Tarr

What just happened?

By Les Tarr | Fri 15th May 2026 - 10:57 am

I’ve been reflecting on the events of 7th May, the election cycle that dominated the entire country, especially Scotland.

UK-wide, the political landscape is widely acknowledged to have changed forever, transforming from a traditional two-party system to one of perhaps four or five parties. Over time, this may become even more divergent. Westminster, as a political ecosystem, struggles to accommodate this increase in influential parties. In fact, this struggle may have been the root cause of the sea change itself.

In all the constituent nations of the Union, the rise of Reform UK is, in my opinion, the result of a protest vote, brought about by growing frustration with the lack of delivery by successive administrations. The last few parliaments in Westminster have been dogged by sleaze, controversy, and self-interest. This has led to a complete lack of focus on voters – those people who cast their vote in expectation of change and their needs being met.

In England, Reform UK is a voice of division, directed against people who are ‘different’. This includes immigrants, individuals of diverse sexual identities, and those suffering from long-term physical or mental illnesses. Essentially, it targets anyone not conforming to its core demographic: people of wealth or those who aspire to or revere wealthy individuals. It’s somewhat akin to America and the Trump faithful, who believe that wealthy people inherently possess superior knowledge.

In Wales, it appears to be a huge protest against a century of Labour dominance that has failed to deliver anything beyond policies that interfere with people’s lives: an increasingly impactful nanny state. Labour will never again achieve the dominance they once held. With Plaid Cymru now being the largest single party in the Senedd, voters have clearly said, ‘Hey, what about us?’

Here in Scotland, the situation is different, yet still familiar. Nineteen years of SNP governance have failed to truly deliver a better Scotland. The rhetoric has been that of the left and pseudo centre-left, set against a backdrop of independence. Reform UK arrives talking about waste in national and local government – something we all knew about. In terms of immigration, their poisonous message doesn’t quite resonate. After all, we proudly say we’re all ‘Jock Tamson’s bairns’, but we all know people who talk about those who are ‘not like us’. Issues of transphobia will undoubtedly be prominent on Reform UK’s Holyrood agenda; their spokesperson on the BBC Scotland Sunday morning political show could barely conceal this.

What Reform UK offered voters in Scotland was an option to protest the status quo of established political parties.

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Roderick Lynch

Alderdice, Thornhill and Turner spoke. Were you listening?

By Roderick Lynch | Fri 15th May 2026 - 9:01 am

I read Rob Blackie’s post on Tuesday. Well written, but none of this is new. The difference now is that the warning lights are flashing everywhere, especially in London.

Let’s tell it straight. The party has a serious problem in urban Britain, and pretending otherwise will only make it worse.

We keep branding the Greens as “extreme” because they are attracting attention and energy we can currently only dream about in many inner-city areas. The Greens spoke to communities in plain English. One word summed up their offer: change.

Meanwhile, too often we sound cautious, managerial, and disconnected, speaking largely to the same narrow demographic. That is not enough in modern London.

What struck me most during the recent elections was the diversity of Green candidates across London, particularly in Lambeth, Southwark, and Lewisham. They looked like the communities they wanted to represent. That matters. Representation matters. Visibility matters. Engagement matters.

The 2020 General Election Review led by Baroness Thornhill could not have been clearer. It warned that failure to genuinely engage minority communities would eventually cost the party dearly at the ballot box. Yet years later, in too many boroughs, we still concentrate activity almost exclusively in affluent white areas. Tower Hamlets and Kensington & Chelsea are obvious examples where we have only campaigned in the more prosperous wards.

At the same time, we have the usual keyboard strategists insisting we can win here or there while effectively bypassing large sections of the non-white vote. It is an omni-shambles when viewed across the major cities.

Lord Woolley of Operation Black Vote said over a decade ago that if Black and brown communities were better organised and recognised the collective value of their vote, they could reshape the outcome of numerous elections. The Greens understood that. They listened. Then they acted on it across London and other urban centres.

Now some people call the Greens “extreme” for doing what every serious political party should do organise, engage, and include.

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Tanya Park

What last Thursday tells us about beating Reform (and where we still need to do the work)

By Tanya Park | Thu 14th May 2026 - 5:04 pm

The headlines from last Thursday have largely been written around Reform’s gains. Understandably so. 1,453 seats, 14 councils, a projected 284 Westminster seats if those numbers were applied to a general election. The narrative writes itself.

But buried inside those same results is a different story, one that matters rather a lot for Liberal Democrats. It is not a story of comfortable reassurance. It is, if anything, a more useful thing: a reasonably clear picture of what works against Reform, where it works, and where we are still exposed.

The short version is that incumbency beats protest. Almost every time. The places where we held or advanced against the Reform tide were places where we had built something durable: years of casework, local campaigns, a face people recognised on the doorstep. The places where Reform made inroads into what should be our territory were, almost without exception, places where that groundwork was thinner.

It is also worth noting that Reform’s position is softer than the seat count suggests. Their vote share actually slid between 2025 and 2026, and when voters were asked to choose someone to actually govern in Thursday’s mayoral contests, Reform’s support fell to single digits in several races. Their 1,453 gains tell you as much about Labour’s implosion as about Reform’s own growth. That means there is something to work with.

Where the model worked

Portsmouth is the cleanest example. The Liberal Democrats won outright control of the city council, 22 of 42 seats, with Reform coming second on 12. The local party’s response was telling: they said Reform had “thrown everything they had” at Portsmouth and lost. That is what a well-organised, deeply rooted local party looks like under sustained pressure. It holds.

Stockport is arguably more significant, because it punctures the lazy assumption that the Lib Dem model only works in southern, Remain-voting, leafy England. Stockport is Greater Manchester. It voted for Brexit. It is the kind of place people tend to write off when they talk about “the north.” The Liberal Democrats won a majority there on Thursday, 33 of 63 seats, the first majority any party has held on that council since 2011. Reform picked up two seats in wards with paper-thin margins and went no further. The difference was fifteen years of patient rebuilding since the coalition years knocked us back, and a local team that had genuinely reconnected with the community.

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Chris Northwood

What really happened in Gorton and Denton

By Chris Northwood | Thu 14th May 2026 - 3:07 pm

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.

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Colin Ferguson

Local elections 2026 – A view from North East England

By Colin Ferguson | Thu 14th May 2026 - 1:15 pm

Enough has been written by more experienced observers than me to make it worthwhile to rehash the arguments already made about this year’s local election results.

It is clear that the overall headline is positive, and we should be proud to have made our eighth successive year of local election gains. It is equally clear that in many parts of the country, the hard work of our candidates and campaigners did not pay off. We are right to have a frank internal debate about that.

We are up against powerful populist machines, in Reform UK and the Green Party. The tectonic plates of politics are shifting beneath our feet. Liberalism is under threat now more than ever, and it is incumbent on us to fight for our beliefs. Nowhere is this truer than in the North of England.

In Newcastle, where I am the Group Leader, the result was declared so late on Friday that most people missed it. Despite surges from Reform and the Greens, we made gains to become the largest group, on 25 (out of 78). We topped the poll in the Newcastle upon Tyne North constituency, setting us up as real challengers for the next general election.

This was the hardest campaign I can recall fighting. We lost some good people who did not deserve to lose. In Newcastle, I believe we had the best ground game of anyone: we put out more literature- citywide, local and targeted- than anyone else; we knocked more doors than others; we were ruthlessly pragmatic in targeting. But that is what was required to deliver what we did, in the face of the seemingly organic popularity of other parties.

Being proud, local, community champions is the bedrock of our campaigning success, and a necessary part of winning as a Lib Dem. But in this era of multi-party politics, we must also offer a vision for change: that is what the electorate are crying out for, after years of stagnation. So many people’s concerns were national. We have to capture people’s imaginations for what a proudly liberal future could be.

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Victor Chamberlain

Liberal Democrats cannot afford to be absent from Britain’s cities

By Victor Chamberlain | Thu 14th May 2026 - 11:30 am

The Liberal Democrats have a growing urban problem and pretending otherwise will only make it worse.

Last week’s local election results exposed something many campaigners in cities have felt for some time: our local organisation is often far stronger than our national political message. In too many urban areas, particularly diverse cities, voters simply do not hear a compelling Liberal Democrat case for why we matter to modern Britain.

Politics today is increasingly shaped nationally, even in local elections. Voters consume politics through social media, online debate, podcasts and national narratives. Parties that succeed understand this and communicate with clarity and confidence. Too often, we do not.

In cities especially, the Liberal Democrats can appear politically invisible not because our values are unpopular, but because our national message lacks definition and urgency. We are too often seen as a party speaking comfortably to affluent southern seats while struggling to project a clear vision for younger renters, working-class families and diverse urban communities.

That should concern us because those voters ought to be natural Liberal Democrats.

I recently wrote privately and constructively to Ed Davey to raise these concerns and invited him to Southwark to discuss them further. Not to complain, but because there are genuine signs of opportunity if the party is prepared to adapt.

In Southwark, despite difficult national headwinds, we gained a councillor and returned 12 Liberal Democrat councillors in one of the most diverse boroughs in the country. That success did not come from national momentum. It came from relentless local campaigning, strong community relationships and candidates with personal credibility built over years of work. But we deserved to get far more people elected and do better.

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Mark Blackburn

Let’s stop tiptoeing around it: we belong in Europe

By Mark Blackburn | Thu 14th May 2026 - 9:45 am

There is a speech I keep coming back to. In the run-up to the 2014 European Parliament elections, Charles Kennedy told the party conference something that cut right to the heart of our political identity. Europe, he said, was in the Liberal Democrats’ DNA. But for too long, he added with characteristic wit, that had stood for “do not acknowledge.” It was time, he argued, to be front-footed, unapologetic and proud in our pro-Europeanism.

Charles was right then. He would be even more right now.

Our current framing on Europe, centred on a customs union, is not just insufficient, it is actively working against us. The evidence to support that view is not anecdotal. It is there in black and white in the new Best for Britain report.

Drawing on YouGov polling of more than 4,000 adults, it contains findings that every Liberal Democrat parliamentarian and activist should read. EU membership is the most popular option with the British public, with 53% in favour and just 32% opposed. But it is among our own voters that the numbers are most striking. A full 84% of Liberal Democrat supporters back the UK rejoining the EU, the highest figure of any party grouping polled.

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Lord William Wallace

The UK’s political leadership deficit

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 13th May 2026 - 6:02 pm

Political leadership is about changing the public agenda. Keir Starmer has failed to sway public opinion on major issues. Nigel Farage has been a much more effective political leader, albeit for a fraudulent project. He successfully made the argument for leaving the EU against the conventional wisdom of the majority of the British political elite and political commentators.

Margaret Thatcher was in this sense also a highly effective leader. She defied the civil service, many within her own party and Cabinet, and wide sections of the public, and drove through a deliberate shrinking of the size and functions of the state, through tax cuts, privatization, curbs on local government, selling off social housing and more. Politicians today still hesitate to challenge assumptions about outsourcing of public services or pledging to lower taxes, in spite of the very different economic and demographic circumstances we face. The nationalization of British Steel and the return of the railways to unified public management are moves away from neo-liberal orthodoxy – but the water industry still seems a step too far.

Keir Starmer has proved incapable of engaging with the public. The Strategic Defence Review, published ten months ago, called for a ‘National Conversation’ on the multiple threats our country now faces and the response needed to meet them. But we have been told almost nothing since then, and the promised Defence Industrial Plan is still blocked by the Treasury’s refusal to fund it. He’s just delivered another speech on how to ‘reset’ our relations with the EU, which began with some splendid rhetoric and ended with a promise of ensuring better youth mobility, without attempting to explain the complexities of closer cooperation with our neighbours or the trade-offs between sovereignty and shared prosperity and security that we have to make. Worst of all, neither the prime minister or his chancellor have tried to engage the public on the hard choices to be made on public spending and investment in pursuit of sustainable economic growth.

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Tom Reeve

Building Lib Dem groups that work for all members

By Tom Reeve | Wed 13th May 2026 - 3:54 pm

The last few years have been extraordinary for Liberal Democrats in local government. We have taken control of councils we hadn’t held in a generation, broken Conservative dominance in places that looked permanent, and built a base of councillors larger than at any point in recent memory. The May 2024 general election was the visible peak, but the local story has been running longer and deeper.

Now comes the harder part. Winning is one thing. Running things well, year after year, in a way that makes residents glad they voted for us and councillors proud of what they’ve built, takes more.

I’ve been thinking about this from a particular angle: how we work together when we deliver. The culture inside a Liberal Democrat council group shapes everything that comes out of it, and we don’t talk about it enough.

The group is the engine

Most of what residents see is the leader, the cabinet or portfolio holders, and the policies. Most of what makes those things possible is invisible. The group meetings, the WhatsApp threads, the corridor conversations, the informal conventions about who gets heard and who doesn’t. A council group is a working community of dozens of people, often with very different backgrounds, who have to make collective decisions under pressure for four years at a stretch.

Every group has good weeks and bad weeks, and the difference shows in how the administration operates. When the group is working well, messaging holds together, scrutiny is sharper, and people bring problems to the room rather than nursing them quietly. When it isn’t, the administration carries the cost.

What a liberal group culture looks like

We are Liberal Democrats. Our values should describe how we treat each other, not just sit in a manifesto.

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Rebecca Jones

The 2026 Locals were a bad result for the party, let’s not pretend otherwise

By Rebecca Jones | Wed 13th May 2026 - 2:12 pm

Like many Lib Dems who stood in the 2026 locals, I’ve spent most of the last year walking around my ward knocking on doors, delivering leaflets and following the strategy that we were told gave us a really good shot. Our data looked great, we were making lots of contacts and many voters told us they were voting for us tactically against Labour. The race seemed like a clear two horse race, the Greens previously had less than half our vote and didn’t campaign in the ward. It sounded like we had the perfect chance, right?

Well, I thought so too and felt optimistic on polling day and on my way to the count the day after. Then, we came third. Against an insurgent Green party that didn’t even campaign in many wards. Looking back, I don’t believe there is anything different we could have done locally. We ran a great campaign.

It’s the same story in many wards across London, and in other areas where we do not hold the parliamentary seat, where good hardworking teams lost out in wards to parties who did little to no campaigning.

I am genuinely exhausted with seeing people claim this election was a great result for the party. Entrenching ourselves so hard into the blue wall that we can never expand as a party is not a success, and it tells activists like me who live in Labour/Green facing areas that we don’t matter and aren’t cared about by the party.

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Vince Cable

Vince Cable writes: Escaping the Brexit dilemma

By Vince Cable | Wed 13th May 2026 - 11:55 am

There is a Brexit dilemma: a growing consensus that Brexit was a bad mistake together with the fatalistic acceptance that nothing much can be done about it.

For committed Remainers, there is the smug satisfaction of having been right all along. The predicted economic costs have duly materialised. The less predicted global upheaval has left Britain dangerously stranded in a geo-economic no-mans-land.  Public opinion polls are increasingly negative about Brexit. 

If the mistake is so obvious, surely then Britain can and will re-join, with some urgency?  But there is a big difference between the virtual reality …

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Richard Wood

Scotland’s electoral system has reached breaking point

By Richard Wood | Wed 13th May 2026 - 10:16 am

Our biggest success of the May 2026 elections was undoubtedly in Scotland, where the Scottish Liberal Democrats played a blinder to reverse years of challenging Scottish Parliament elections. The Scottish Party won 10 MSPs, up from four in 2021, an outcome that is, surprisingly, our first net gain at any Holyrood election.

However, there’s a broader electoral issue that needs to be addressed. And that’s the disproportionality of the Scottish Parliament’s supposedly proportional system.

The Additional Member System (AMS) used to elect MSPs at Holyrood gives voters two ballots. One elects their local First Past the Post (FPTP) MSP, with 73 single-member …

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Kevin Chun

Londoners need hope – our Party offers none

By Kevin Chun | Wed 13th May 2026 - 8:47 am

These local elections were successful for many, and yes, we should be celebrating. But as someone who fought in Central London — a Zone 1 ward, as central as it gets — I can’t honestly say I feel happy.

Everyone keeps talking about the Lib Dem tortoise, the slow and steady march forward, but all I can think of is the Blackadder episode where they measured gains on the Western Front with a tape measure. Being a Lib Dem in Central London feels exactly like trench warfare.

It feels like we have out-of-touch generals sitting miles behind the lines, poring over maps, insisting victory is just around the corner, while sending activists over the top with bayonets against machine guns. Every election we’re ordered forward again into impossible territory, and every time the dispatches come back from HQ saying: good progress elsewhere, keep sacrificing for the cause. Meanwhile, the people actually in the trenches are exhausted, abandoned, and ignored.

I’m sorry, but we cannot carry on like this.

In two years, 72 MPs have done virtually nothing for communities like mine. People on estates in London are struggling now. Families need lower bills now, safer streets now, housing now, hope now. Instead, what do we get? Vague promises about half-price energy bills in 2035, and a leader who seems obsessed with church roofs while the country falls apart around us.

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Hugh Andrew

A View from the Island of Mull

By Hugh Andrew | Tue 12th May 2026 - 7:35 pm

I am clearly not alone in sharing a sense of deflation at the election results UK wide. While in Scotland there was some degree of recovery it was from an appalling position. It is sobering to note we are now the sixth party in Scotland. We should bear in mind too that our gains in the Highlands and islands were aided by the ferry fiasco which the SNP has overseen. Ferries are the lifeline of not simply the islands they serve but integral to the economies of the communities from which they leave. The scale of utterly avoidable devastation to peoples lives and to the economies of rural areas cannot be overstated. That Labour’s sole gain in Scotland came in the Western Isles backs this up.

Bruising as it may be to our ego we – and this holds for all bar the SNP – are not a national party but a series of local redoubts – Fife, the Highlands, Orkney and Shetland, Edinburgh, while remnants of electoral strength remain in the Borders and Grampian. In the UK as a whole not far shy of 50% of the electorate voted for insurrectionary parties. It was disappointing to hear Ed’s branding them, and by extension those who voted for them, as ‘extremists’. It is not a description likely to convert those so described.

The reality of the situation is that people are, to use that good Scottish word, scunnered. Scunnered of politicians, scunnered about a failing system which no longer delivers for them, and most of all perhaps scunnered at being ignored by politicians whose only real listening seems to be to other politicians. We are as guilty of this as others. Instead of talking the same talk and walking the same walk as other parties (however much we might protest that we don’t) let us do something radical and different in how we present ourselves. We are, or should be, after all the party of true democracy and localism.

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Rob Parsons

The most unfortunate result possible

By Rob Parsons | Tue 12th May 2026 - 5:02 pm

In my view the results of this week’s local elections are the most unfortunate possible. They illustrate perfectly the limitations of our strength and of the nature of our offering to the public.

We made enough gains for the party leadership to pretend to be victorious – and, yes, eight gains in a row is something to be very proud of. But our gains were incremental on a night when Reform and the Green party hoovered up millions of votes. (The limits of Reform’s success are not lost on me by the way – they reflect Reform’s current standing in the polls which is about 5% off the peak of a short while ago; long may it continue to wain.) As others point out, we face diminishing returns on a policy that is designed for limited appeal. Its purpose is to make well off people in the south east feel good about themselves*, and it has very limited appeal to the people we need to be talking to, and, to be honest, very little relevance to the problems the country faces. So we are still deliberately digging ourselves into a hole which is of no use to the country, and the result was just good enough to encourage our leadership to keep digging.

In my view we need to reshape the way we make our policy to fit what is actually happening to millions of people in this country who vote for change, whether it be Reform or the Green Party, because the status quo is failing them and has been for some time, and they have no hope that it will change. We have decided to cast ourselves in the popular mind as a more of the same party, just a bit nicer than the others. And more of the same won’t cut it any more.

Our minds are both concentrated and limited by what we are going to put in our next manifesto, and here is where I propose we should make a very significant change in our planning, and in our offer to the public.

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Ruvi Ziegler

The Liberal Democrats and Yesh Atid: a fundamental incompatibility?

By Ruvi Ziegler | Tue 12th May 2026 - 2:56 pm

In 2021, I wrote a Lib Dem Voice article warning that our Party’s stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is misaligned with that of our ‘sister’ party in Israel, Yesh Atid.

Over four years later, those concerns have not diminished. Yesh Atid continues to pay occasional lip service to a two-state solution. In practice, however, the party has repeatedly aligned itself with the assumptions and priorities of the Israeli nationalist mainstream, while failing to meaningfully challenge, and at times actively enabling, the blatantly illegal actions of the Netanyahu-Smotrich-Ben Gvir government. Lapid’s hardline rhetoric on territorial expansion and Palestinian statehood, admonishment of the ICC arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant, and most recently his formalised political alliance with right-wing nationalist Naftali Bennett in a joint party list entitled ‘together’ (Be-Yachad) all point in the same direction. Whereas Yesh Atid adopts a liberal stance on certain domestic matters in Israel, including protections for the queer community, it is clearly not offering a liberal alternative on the question of Palestine.

In February this year, Lapid expressed support for expanding the Israeli state to its “biblical borders.” suggesting that Israeli territory could one day extend as far as Iraq. Months earlier, responding to the recognition of Palestine by the UK, Portugal, Australia and Canada, Lapid described the move as “a diplomatic disaster, a bad move and a reward for terror.” These are not the words of a man truly committed to the two-state solution.

Nor has this rhetoric been merely symbolic. In October 2025, Yesh Atid MKs voted in favour of annexing Maale Adumim, one of the largest and most strategically significant Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, despite annexation being clearly prohibited under international law.

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Jack Meredith

From commenting to campaigning

By Jack Meredith | Tue 12th May 2026 - 12:59 pm

The 2026 Senedd elections have come and gone.

Labour is out of power, Plaid is seeking to run a minority government, Reform made many gains, and the Greens have made their Senedd debut.

While we were hoping for better results, this election cycle will remain especially significant to me forever, as it was the first time I’ve gotten involved in politics beyond just voting (an important task in itself).

I volunteered to work on Sam Bennett’s team in Gwyr Abertawe, where we faced strong opposition from Labour, the Tories, the Greens, Reform, and Plaid Cymru. From my very first day, I felt so welcome by the team. My first job was to deliver letters to residents at Swansea Marina, which introduced me to the bane of every campaigner’s life: awkwardly-placed mailboxes.

As I was finishing up, I had a phone call from the campaign manager; David Chadwick MP had made a surprise appearance to help Sam canvass. This was a two-for-one experience for me, as not only had I never met an MP, I had also never canvassed! Sam showed me the ropes, and then off I went with David, shadowing him on the first few doors before I knocked on doors myself, learning my own rhythm: “Hello, my name is Jack, I’m here on behalf of” and so on. I even managed to convince one lovely family to put up a stakeboard!

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We need to talk about Gorton and Denton

By Olivia Walker | Tue 12th May 2026 - 11:09 am

Although the party consolidated our voter base in areas such as Surrey, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire at the local elections, something which stuck out to me was the way that despite the best efforts of all our amazing hard-working volunteers, the party lost ground in Labour-facing urban areas such as Manchester and Sheffield as a result of being leapfrogged by the Green Party and I think part of the reason for this leads back to the Gorton and Denton by-election.

At a Q&A back in March, current Lib Dem leader Ed Davey was asked about the by-election, “wasn’t it the sort of seat we should be in contention in, the sort of seat we should be trying to win?” His response was the following: “We didn’t try because we knew we weren’t in contention to beat Reform… but what we do do though is where we think we can win, we put the resources in.”

I think this explanation was a massive middle finger to the Manchester Liberal Democrats from the leadership and I’m going to explain why I think the decision from the leadership to not give them a helping hand in Gorton and Denton was a massive mistake that proved detrimental to similar Labour-facing areas in the local elections.

The Manchester Liberal Democrats were placed in a very difficult position where they worked their arses off with what they could, like they always do and to say that ‘we didn’t try’ is such a disservice to them, because they did try, they tried their hardest to support Jackie and be a proud liberal voice for the people of Gorton and Denton – but what more could they have possibly done when they had no support from the leadership?

The leadership often complains about a lack of media coverage but I would argue the current approach is a factor in this because what is the point of us as a party if we see a high-profile Labour-facing by-election with an illiberal candidate like Matt Goodwin in contention and we have absolutely nothing to say about it? All because it happened to be in a seat we didn’t ‘stand a chance of winning’ in?

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Rob Blackie

The biggest risk is playing it safe

By Rob Blackie | Tue 12th May 2026 - 8:58 am

It’s a few years into a Labour government, who are making unpopular decisions. And in the London elections – we surge to power as the biggest party, or main opposition party, in Lambeth, Southwark, Brent, Camden, Islington and many other London boroughs.

2002 was a great year for us in London, and other cities where we fought Labour. We leapt forward as progressive voters switched from Labour to us.

By contrast in 2026 our vote share in inner London boroughs was the worst since 1978. We aren’t running any inner London boroughs. We are only even the main opposition party in one, Brent.

This isn’t just a London, or a city, problem though. Our 2026 local election vote share of 14% is worse than in the coalition year of 2011 – and our lowest in 8 years.

Why is this?

The youthfulness of modern cities seems an easy place to turn for an answer – dominated as they are by working age people. But this is simply a sign of our failure to reach these voters.

Liberal values in Britain are, generally, most strongly held by younger people. We should be doing much better among the working age voters.

We have this opportunity – but why aren’t we exploiting it?

Pollster Chris Annous points out that most voters do not believe that the Liberal Democrats actually want to change our country. In fact they see us as representatives of the status quo, alongside Labour and the Conservatives. And the public desperately wants to see Britain changed.

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Mark Valladares

11 May 2026 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Mon 11th May 2026 - 10:30 pm
  • Lib Dems – Starmer’s reset speech tone deaf on Wales
  • Cole-Hamilton responds to Swinney writing to opposition parties

Lib Dems – Starmer’s reset speech tone deaf on Wales

Commenting on Keir Starmer’s ‘reset speech’, Welsh Liberal Democrat Westminster Spokesperson David Chadwick MP said:

Keir Starmer’s speech today showed just how out of touch Labour has become with communities in Wales. Despite years of Labour failure in Cardiff Bay and last week’s election results, the Prime Minister did not even mention Wales, let alone offer the fresh thinking people are crying out for.

To make matters worse, Labour has rubbed salt in the wounds of

…

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Caron Lindsay

Lib Dem MSPs arrive at Holyrood

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 11th May 2026 - 9:00 pm

Lib Dem MSPs arrive at ParliamentI headed to the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood in Edinburgh this lunchtime to see the much bigger group of 10 Lib Dem MSPs arrive in the company of Wendy Chamberlain, our Scottish Deputy Leader who chaired our Scottish Election campaign.

I somehow managed not to make a complete idiot of myself and cry all over them, but it did feel quite emotional to see the hard work we had put in pay off. I also felt for those who had narrowly missed out.

The new MSPs have three days of induction. I think it will take longer than that for them to find their way around the building which is much more attractive on the inside than it is outside in my opinion. On Thursday, we will see them being sworn in and then next Tuesday they will elect the First Minister.

The photo shows Alex leading the way with Adam Harley, Morven-May MacCallum and Yi-Pei Chou Turvey in the next row. Behind them are Sanne Dijkstra-Downie, David Green and Willie Rennie with Andrew Baxter, Duncan Dunlop and Liam McArthur, sadly not with his constant companion in Orkney Gerry the Springer Spaniel. If you need a fix of Gerry videos, watch here.

Here’s Alex recording an as yet to be seen social media video with his usual energy.

Exuberant Alex Cole-Hamilton films social media post

David and Yi-Pei talk to reporters

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John Grout

One of these things is not like the other

By John Grout | Mon 11th May 2026 - 7:15 pm

We Lib Dems have some reflecting to do after this week’s local and devolved elections. Yes, we made gains for a record eight years running – so yes, we now have more devolved parliamentarians and councillors, and run more English councils than we did before. But for the first time in a few years, our gains were not spectacular: we flirted with Labour, but ultimately they pulled ahead of us on numbers. We once again toyed with oblivion in Wales. And both the Green Party and Reform UK outperformed us on gains. Why?

The two “insurgent” parties are poles apart – Reform UK are far-right and have pledged to introduce actual concentration camps, while the Green Party are progressive and to the left, and have not. In fact, on many issues, our core vote and the Green Party’s overlap considerably, and on many more, we disagree only by matters of degree. Of late, the Green Party leadership has been decidedly more bullish on issues that only a few years ago, our own leadership would have been equally full-throated on and which many of us wish it were again. Reform UK, meanwhile, have gutted entire departments and programmes in councils they run, saving little money or less than none overall, but with huge impacts disproportionately affecting the women and minorities their party’s policies are crafted to undermine. They have promised to introduce Trump-style politics to the UK, specifically attacking the fundamental societal pillars of trust, inclusivity, state support, and public health which our party exists to defend. And again: concentration camps. I really shouldn’t need to say more.

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Mathew Hulbert

Mathew on Monday: Starmer’s time is up – Labour needs a new Leader and a new direction

By Mathew Hulbert | Mon 11th May 2026 - 5:30 pm

There are moments in politics when you can see the tide has irreversibly turned. Keir Starmer’s much-hyped speech this morning was one of those moments – not because it miraculously reset his premiership, but because it confirmed just how exhausted and politically diminished it has become even after less than two years. Some Labour MPs are today saying it is “too little, too late” and the number calling for him to set out a timetable for his departure grows by the hour.

The problem for the Prime Minister is not merely that Labour has suffered very bruising electoral setbacks (to say …

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Tara Foster

“Politically Stagnant” – Local Elections 2026 reflections

By Tara Foster | Mon 11th May 2026 - 4:02 pm

This election has revealed issues with the Party’s messaging approach, policy approach, and electoral distinctiveness. These need to be reckoned with very soon if the Party is going to remain relevant.

This election cannot be regarded as a victory

Many senior figures are calling this a victory. That we have “held off Reform, won more councillors than the Greens, and trounced the Conservatives.” – quoting directly from Ed Davey’s Instagram page. This take feels detached from reality.

We haven’t held off Reform; despite only gaining overall control of a handful of councils, they’ve elected over 1000 new councillors. We haven’t won more new councillors than the Greens, they’ve elected a net-gain of 441 councillors compared to our 155. In an election year where the Tories and Labour combined lost over 2000 councillors, it is appalling that we did not win more. What’s even more shocking is that many of these races were won by our opponents with far less observed work in the ward.

The Lib Dems can no longer depend on the progressive vote

In many inner-city areas, the Lib Dem campaign put in a monumental shift. People I personally knew in those areas spent the last year canvassing and delivering yet found themselves really struggling on polling day. In one area where I had fully anticipated a LibDem win, we ended up coming third. The Greens, who had done no serious work in the ward, came second, and the Labour incumbents held on. Many of our wins were holds, suggesting that we enjoy incumbency bonus, but there is little penetration of our messaging, despite all this work. Months of work yield little meaningful payoff, and our candidates come away demoralised and defeated. In summary, in the eyes of progressively minded people, the Lib Dems are no longer perceived as a progressive party and cannot command a tactical vote sufficient to dethrone Labour and hold off Reform.

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Gareth McAleer

The end of the United Kingdom?

By Gareth McAleer | Mon 11th May 2026 - 2:20 pm

The latest election results have predictably consumed Westminster’s commentariat. Much of the focus has been on Nigel Farage, his rhetoric, his appeal and his ability to reshape the political battlefield. But in that fixation something far more significant is being overlooked. We are no longer debating the future direction of the United Kingdom. We are confronting the real prospect of its end.

Two political forces have collided and together they create a moment of genuine constitutional crisis. This is not another cyclical shift in British politics. It is a structural break that challenges whether the union can continue in its current form.

First all three devolved Celtic nations, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, have elected governments with strong nationalist mandates. On its own this is not decisive. The UK has weathered such moments before, with support for independence rising and falling within a functioning union.

But this moment is different because of the second force, the rise of Nigel Farage as a plausible occupant of Downing Street. His presence changes not just the tone of politics but the perceived direction of the state itself.

Farage does not simply represent another swing of the political pendulum. He embodies a politics that is hostile to immigration, dismissive of pluralism and deeply sceptical of devolution. His instinct is not to accommodate the diversity of the United Kingdom but to centralise power and impose a singular political identity.

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Johan Prinsloo

Decent results, but we need to learn

By Johan Prinsloo | Mon 11th May 2026 - 12:46 pm

On the 7th May, while we made some good gains in Scotland, and held strong in some areas in England, there are many who have left these elections feeling dissatisfied with their current results. While our results show stability and consolidation, this simply doesn’t cut it in regions we were expecting major gains.

Where this can be shown is through London, and as I have been campaigning across London, I have been feeling the dichotomy of jubilation and disappointment many are facing. In spite of a great ground game across London, we fell short in key target areas and this comes down to the national message we project. We can no longer exist as a party on results or simple ground game, but in an era of political whirlwinds we need to project hope through a strong national campaign instead, and project change.

In spite of this, the elections did see some positives. We saw major success stories in Brent and Ealing, with the local parties there making significant gains on Labour. Our ground game all across London was a marvel to watch, and the establishment of a 100% majority in Richmond, as well as maintaining/improving large majorities in Kingston and Sutton is something to champion going forward. These are emblematic of our strong ground game resonating well, when there was a record of results behind them.

However, it is also important to accept the reality of the situation that we have underperformed in many areas, even just in London. Our major target of Merton has fallen flat with only two councillors gained. Also, in Lambeth, Southwark, Islington and my home borough of Croydon, expected gains have somehow evaporated and in some areas, paper candidate Greens in areas like Newham, Barking and Enfield have won without ever campaigning!

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Shaun Ennis

Standing Still

By Shaun Ennis | Mon 11th May 2026 - 10:52 am

No one has ever asked me to devise an idea for Ed Davey’s next stunt. But if I was approached from on high, I might suggest having him wade through a river of treacle.

That’s how it feels trying to spread the Liberal Democrat message in the North of England these days.

It’s been an underwhelming set of elections in our part of the country. Despite some notable and very important exceptions such as Stockport, Preston and Sefton, the Liberal Democrats have failed to cut through with what has been a predominantly nationally motivated electorate.

And we’ve lost some great councillors too. Other campaigners that should have got over the line this time have fallen short.

It’s not for want of trying. Lib Dems across the region have pounded the streets delivering and knocking doors at truly impressive pace. But we have been overtaken by national voices competing on a national battleground that – in our part of the world at least – our party seems all too happy to vacate.

Our party leadership has said that our brand of community politics is the antidote to Reform’s division and I believe that with all my heart. Especially in the diverse metropolitan areas like the one I represent. Where Reform and the Tories seek to divide people based on ethnicity, race and religion for political gain. But we haven’t made our case well enough in northern cities.

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David Vigar

The far-right nightmare looms. What are we doing about it?

By David Vigar | Mon 11th May 2026 - 9:02 am

Am I alone in thinking our response to the local election results is a little too self-congratulatory? Of course we should broadcast our success in increasing our councillor count yet again and congratulate everyone who worked hard to make it happen.

But for me, the main message of the elections is that Britain now faces the nightmare prospect of a far-right totalitarian government. William Hill now has Reform 11-10 on to win the most seats in 2029. The next takeaway is that we, the Liberal Democrats, have a critical role in stopping it.

Almost exactly a year ago, Lib Dem Voice ran a piece that I wrote after the 2025 local elections when I was part of a winning team in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, beating Reform into second place in six out of seven divisions.

There, we developed an anti-Reform playbook based on our doorstep experiences. It included some rebuttal of Reform claims – to make people pause for thought – but more importantly, it offered a positive alternative in the shape of strong candidates and their vision for the town. Reform appealed to the worst instincts of voters. We appealed to the best.

Reform also appeal to the heart rather than the mind, so the response has to be directed to the same place. Logic doesn’t work – no more than it does with someone who’s fallen in love with a rat.

Last year I wrote that this needed a proper strategy, “a solid and well-researched plan for the rest of this Parliament”. I sent that blog to senior party members and I was told that action was underway. We even had a “Reform Watch” group. Anyone heard of it? It seems to be a self-help group for councillors, anything but a national campaign.

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Mark Valladares

Welcome to my day: 11 May 2026 – and now that I’m back, what did I miss?

By Mark Valladares | Mon 11th May 2026 - 7:30 am

I’ve been away for the past fortnight, mostly riding on trains, occasionally walking around small, but interesting, towns, many a bit off of the beaten path. This rather lovely piece of local government architecture is Tartu Town Hall, which has a carillon in its bell tower. if you’re in the area, I recommend dropping by.

What that meant is that I missed our reinstated local elections here in Suffolk, unlike so many of you out there across the country. Were the results good ones for the Liberal Democrats? Well, after my esteemed colleague, Caron Lindsay, offered us her streams of consciousness over the weekend – and well done, Caron, on preserving our deposit in Almond Valley! – we’ve been inundated with views from a wide range of members and activists across the country. How to deal with Reform, how to deal with the Greens, why we need to be more radical, more pro-European, more… well, you get the picture, I suspect.

David Vigar will kick us off with some thoughts on how to deal with the threat from Reform, and there’s no doubt that we did lose seats to Reform in some places, and that they denied us wards we thought we would win or hold. Shaun Ennis, from Trafford, has some thoughts of the impact of party strategy on campaigners in the North of England (and I define the word “north” more liberally than Shaun might do).

We have another first time contributor, the Chair of London Young Liberals, Johan Prinsloo, who has some ideas about national messaging and how it did, or didn’t help local campaigners, whilst Gareth McAleer, looking at the impact of the success of nationalists in both Scotland and Wales, wonders aloud about the threat to a United Kingdom. And, of course, we’ll have Mathew Hulbert back, and I’m sure that he’ll have some views about the campaign, particularly with a Midlands focus, I suspect.

The Lords are back, sort of, on Wednesday for the Kings Speech, and we’ll be looking forward to that during the afternoon. Yet again, I don’t get to wear a frock, and the tiara stays in its box, but I’m sure that I’ll cope somehow.

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Caron Lindsay

Another stream of consciousness on the election results – England this time

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 10th May 2026 - 12:33 pm

So we’re up 155 councillors in England. We can give ourselves a big pat on the back, right?

Well, maybe not.

Let’s look at London. A tale of two cities in one if ever there was one.

In the leafy southern areas, our heartlands, our results were, to be honest, unhealthily good. While it is a testament to how well our councils in Richmond, Sutton and Kingston are doing and are regarded by local people, holding virtually all the seats just isn’t conducive to good, inclusive government.  Even though it would disadvantage us, perhaps we should really be pushing for PR for local government as much as national.

But it wasn’t all plain sailing in that neck of the woods. In Merton, we had hoped to do much better against a dreadful Labour Council, but our gains were modest and Labour easily held control, gaining a seat from the Conservatives in the process.

It was a completely different story in inner London where the Green vote rocketed up.

Voters looked to them, not our well established Council groups, to defeat Labour and several councils, including Southwark, Haringey and Lambeth went to no overall control as the Greens surged. In Islington, where we once ran the Council, we didn’t make the breakthrough we had hoped and I was very sad that talented people like Rebecca Jones didn’t get elected despite spirited campaigns. In Haringey, voters again looked to the Greens and another disappointment was that Shamim Muhammad missed out. She spoke in the global women’s rights debate we had at Federal Conference and would have been a powerful voice for women’s rights on the Council.

We ran full, locally relevant campaigns in those areas and worked our socks off. The Greens did next to nothing on the ground but yet hoovered up hundreds of Council seats.

Why?

Everyone knows what the Greens stand for. They are speaking to people’s concerns about the divisive rhetoric we see from Reform and other socially conservative sources, about inequality, about poverty, about housing, about the international situation. And our lack of a cohesive national message is holding us back.  People do not feel that we get it, that we are on their side.

The challenge for us is that the Greens is that they are going full throttle with an emotionally resonant message that connects with people and we are not.  We sound technocratic. We lack passion. We don’t respond with suitable levels of outrage when the Prime Minister comes out with Reform lite garbage on immigration. In fact we come out with nonsense that sounds like we’re pandering to it only to put out a slightly better thing a few days later. It’s mixed messaging that makes us look untrustworthy.

We don’t have to promise everyone a free puppy, as the Greens frequently come close to doing, but we do need to wear our liberal values on our sleeve. It is simply not good enough to slightly shamefacedly and timidly put out something saying we are against division without actually taking on the arguments advanced by those who are stoking the division.

Our job as a liberal party is to bring people together and protect marginalised communities from attack and we need to be much better and clearer about it.

We look very much at the moment that we are here to serve the home counties and “blue wall” seats when we should be a voice for the north and our cities too.

So much of what we say seems to be moderated by timidity. We fear upsetting those in those seats more than we fear failing those in the rest of the country. Our liberal values are universal and we need to apply them and be relevant in every setting.

I understand that some key councillors across the country were warning that we needed to up our game against the Greens a long time ago and were ignored. The results this week show that we will lose out in the future if we fail to do that. In places like Oxfordshire we need to keep all progressive voters onside if we are going to continue to win. If we don’t, and at some point in the future the Tories and Reform merge and unite the right block vote, we will be in peril.

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