2020 Liberal Democrats Leadership Election

[CumbrianLefty]

LibDems formed a minority administration in Bromley back in 1998, they have no seats at all now.

[IceAgeComing]

They'd been hemmoraging support in Bromley for years before: the only Parliamentary seat they were contested was Orpington and 2001 was as good a chance they had of winning there.  I think its a place where the local parties just died during the coalition: that's what the results seem to suggest.

That's another issue the Lib Dems have: in a lot of places where they were historically competitive their parties are moribund or struggling with very low membership because of the legacy of the coalition.  The Isle of Wight is probably an extreme example but its one that's worth talking about: the Liberal Democrats had majority control of Isle of Wight County Council from 1981 to 1998 and were the largest party until 2005; they held the Parliamentary seat in the 70s and 80s, and also between 1997 and 2001.  In the 2017 locals, they won two seats, got less votes than Labour and the Greens; in the 2017 General Election they lost their deposit and in 2019 they stood down to support the Greens.  That's an extreme example but it shows the issue they have to deal with.  The Brexit issue in 2019 helped to balance this out in certain places but they didn't win in a lot of those and who knows if those activists who care a lot about Brexit would even back the Lib Dems in future local and general elections - I think you'll see a strong shift back away from them.

That's the barrier for the Lib Dems: and they have to look at these places and try to figure out which ones are gone, if not forever for a long time (like the Isle of Wight) and which they can focus on to regain their support.  The worst thing they could do is focus on the places they did well in in 2019 since those are the ones often with the smallest base of activists and by doing that they make the situation worse in the places which have that local base of support.

[EastAnglianLefty]

But places like Bromley do make a certain amount of sense for them, as it's reasonably wealthy, there are an increasing number of graduates but a comparatively low non-white population and it's in an ideal location for the NIMBY messages they thrive on.

[Former President tack50]

What about Surrey? How much of the Lib Dem surge there was Brexit-based and how much was genuine support for them?

Iirc don't Lib Dems tend to get distant seconds in most of rural southeast England? Not like those seconds matter of course since that's where the Tories regularly break 60% and what not.

Anyways as for a future Lib Dem strategy, an underrated thing is that while there are still 4 years to correct course, assuming the Lib Dems do not surge from here to election day, they seem to have gone down, not up since 2019. They are currently polling around 8% when they got 13% or so in 2019.

So the Lib Dems in 2024 will not be playing offence for the most part, they will be playing defence. So while all their close 2nds and what not are nice and they should still try to keep them, they should take a narrow strategy that:

1) Tries to win the very few districts where the Lib Dems very narrowly failed. Obviously they will not win all of them or even a majority.

By this I am just referring to the 5 districts where a swing of under 1% is needed as barring unpredictable local circumstances and what not; I don't think the Lib Dems can flip anything else. I don't even think they can flip that many here, but the rest are essencially impossible. These 6 seats are:

Dunbartonshire East, Wimbledon, Sheffield Hallam, Carshalton & Wallington, Cheltenham and Winchester

Ironically they are probably better positioned in the latter 3 than the former 3, where local circumstances mattered more into getting the Lib Dems just narrowly miss the finish line. All 6 are winnable though I'd say they have a better shot at the latter 3

2) More importantly, try and concentrate all their efforts into holding what they have. They will be playing defence in 2024 unless they start polling at around 12-13% again, so they need to behave like that.

Granted most of their seats are safe, or as safe as a Lib Dem seat can get. They need to campaign in all of them but still seats like Bath, Oxford West & Abingdon, St. Albans or the 3 London seats they can get away with a normal campaign.

The Lib Dems really would need to concentrate into their 4 Scottish seats (trying to position themselves as the best unionist party I suppose does the trick) and Westmorland and Lonsdale (no idea how to deal with this one, I guess Farron has a big personal vote?)

[CumbrianLefty]

LibDems scored under 12% GB-wide in 2019, better than the previous 2 GEs but otherwise their lowest since they started fighting most seats in the 1974 elections. In votes per candidate terms it was still their third worst since the 1950s.

[DaWN]

Yes, we could do that. Or we just could just disband. It would have more or less the same effect and Labour types would be even happier.

May I suggest the following
1) Basing a strategy on current polling would be a disaster for any party, because the chances of polling in May 2024 resembling polling now are microscopically low.
2) Universal swing is not a thing; it's possible for a small party like the Lib Dems to go up in seats and down in votes. Especially as there are not many seats with low swings needed to gain.

Playing defence as described would be suicide and outside of Labour wet dreams nobody is considering it so forget it.

[EastAnglianLefty]

LibDems scored under 12% GB-wide in 2019, better than the previous 2 GEs but otherwise their lowest since they started fighting most seats in the 1974 elections. In votes per candidate terms it was still their third worst since the 1950s.

And indeed it always used to be the case that the Lib Dems went up sharply in the polls during the short campaign, as they got more attention.

The reasons why this is no longer the case are probably worth reflecting on.

[CumbrianLefty]

They might have done better last year had they stuck with Cable - at least he is somewhat likeable.

[Blair]

My current (foolish) prediction is that Moran will win, everyone on twitter.com will say how progressive & radical she is- and then she'll completely bomb & get forced out.

It will be fun to go back to the old approach of Labour trying to occupy the mainstream of public opinion (the thing that all 3 Labour leadership candidiates agreed on) while the Liberal Democrats chase every single political cause that they can.

It's going to be a long four years with Moran.... what does everyone else think about her?

[Hnv1]

Why is Moran even a LibDem? She could easily sit with the hard left at labour.

There’s nothing really liberal about any of the candidates

[Estrella]

My current (foolish) prediction is that Moran will win, everyone on twitter.com will say how progressive & radical she is- and then she'll completely bomb & get forced out.

It will be fun to go back to the old approach of Labour trying to occupy the mainstream of public opinion (the thing that all 3 Labour leadership candidiates agreed on) while the Liberal Democrats chase every single political cause that they can.

It's going to be a long four years with Moran.... what does everyone else think about her?

Moran will probably win and try to be an alcohol-free Charles Kennedy, attacking Starmer from the left, which will go down like a lead balloon because 1) it's not 2005, 2) she only cares about, for the want of a better term, SJW issues, 3) by the time of next election, most progressives will be so fed up with Boris/his successor that they'll all rally behind Labour, 4) good luck chasing liberal Tories with a leader like this.

They might return to the Brighton city council though, so there's a bit of a silver lining.

Poor DaWN... Corbyn might be (politically) dead, but there is no escape from his spectre

[CumbrianLefty]

The only poll taken of this contest showed Moran miles behind (yes it was months ago now and things *could* have changed, but it remains the case the LibDems on the ground are a different beast to what they were in the Kennedy years - hence why most of the enthusiasm for her actually seems to be coming from Corbynistas) and if she ever does look like she might win, expect certain things in her closet to be wheeled out again (of which *that* incident over the computer cable is merely the best known) So basically, I will believe her getting elected leader when I see it.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Worth noting that nobody online seemed to be backing Ed Davey against Swinson, but he still got 35% of the vote.

[DaWN]

Poor DaWN... Corbyn might be (politically) dead, but there is no escape from his spectre

Oh don't worry about me. I'm more or less at peace with this now. At least the man himself has f!cked off, so small mercies and all that.

In general I agree with CumbrianLeftie though that she's being overrated and Davey would have to prove he's really dull for her to have much of a chance. And well, in the context of a campaign it's going to be easier to Davey to prove he's not boring than for her to prove she's up to the job.

Why is Moran even a LibDem? She could easily sit with the hard left at labour.
There’s nothing really liberal about any of the candidates

This is really rather overstating it however.

[Continential]

Why is Moran even a LibDem? She could easily sit with the hard left at labour.

There’s nothing really liberal about any of the candidates

Imagine if the Corbynite voters went to the LibDems, resulting in the LibDems being left of Labour.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Why is Moran even a LibDem? She could easily sit with the hard left at labour.

There’s nothing really liberal about any of the candidates

Imagine if the Corbynite voters went to the LibDems, resulting in the LibDems being left of Labour.

The Lib Dems were arguably overall to the left of Labour during parts of the 2000s.
Labour isn't inherently the more left-wing party.

[Continential]

Why is Moran even a LibDem? She could easily sit with the hard left at labour.

There’s nothing really liberal about any of the candidates

Imagine if the Corbynite voters went to the LibDems, resulting in the LibDems being left of Labour.

The Lib Dems were arguably overall to the left of Labour during parts of the 2000s.
Labour isn't inherently the more left-wing party.

I know that it went left of Labour, because of Blair and Iraq

[DaWN]

The Lib Dems were arguably overall to the left of Labour during parts of the 2000s.

I'm also of the opinion that this is mostly a myth

[CumbrianLefty]

More to the point, the mid-noughties are pretty much the *only* point when it could seriously argued that was the case - some have come to regard it as "normal", when it was actually anything but.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The Lib Dems were arguably overall to the left of Labour during parts of the 2000s.

I'm also of the opinion that this is mostly a myth

Yes, what actually spurred this myth is that they were more socially liberal (at a time when Labour was particularly authoritarian on law and order issues) and economics was perceived as an issue of little importance by the commentariat prior to the crash.

[Hnv1]

The Lib Dems were arguably overall to the left of Labour during parts of the 2000s.

I'm also of the opinion that this is mostly a myth

Unless you define left-right for the period as a stance on Iraq. LibDem published the New Orange Book back then (their current cadre can't even publish an orange pamphlet) and reading through it you don't get any idea that it's to the left of Labour, if anything it was a more intellectual Blairism

[Former President tack50]

Probably a bit off-topic, but on that note why did Blair support the Irak war? Throughout Europe the trend was generally opposed to the war, and Blair in particular seems like a bad fit for supporting it?

I would imagine most of Labour's base was oppsoed to the war, and in fact I would not be surprised if there were more supporters of the war among the Conservatives in 2002!

Why did Blair side with Bush over Chirac and Schröder? Especially when Blairism is not that far from what Schröder was doing in Germany

[Blair]

Probably a bit off-topic, but on that note why did Blair support the Irak war? Throughout Europe the trend was generally opposed to the war, and Blair in particular seems like a bad fit for supporting it?

I would imagine most of Labour's base was oppsoed to the war, and in fact I would not be surprised if there were more supporters of the war among the Conservatives in 2002!

Why did Blair side with Bush over Chirac and Schröder? Especially when Blairism is not that far from what Schröder was doing in Germany

God, 9/11 & Kosovo are the three reasons.

Kosovo convinced Blair that Liberal interventionism was morally right & correct; it's forgotten that Blair had to drag Clinton & the US into intervening. The result being that chilren are named after him in Kosovo- which certainly made him think it was the right thing to do.

I also think that the intervention in Kosovo was on shaky legal ground; which explains the willingness to not care about Iraq being on even weaker legal grounds. Blair became convinced he could save a country & do it without any concern for the UN: see Iraq.

His Chicago Speech from 1999 shows he was already having these thoughts quite early on- 9/11 turbocharged this

An interesting way to work out why Blair did it is to ask A.) Would he have tried to get Al Gore to do it? Yes but would not have convinced him B.) Would Gordon Brown have supported the US? Yes but a lot less militantly

On the subject of the Wars impact on Labour I think it's biggest impact was on denting support in Muslim held seats & shaving off a lot of Labour Party Members. My view of Iraq electorally was that the mythical floating voter in Corby didn't care about it or was happy to ignore it as long as their tax credits went up, there kids had a new school & the town centre was kept clean.

[brucejoel99]

Probably a bit off-topic, but on that note why did Blair support the Irak war? Throughout Europe the trend was generally opposed to the war, and Blair in particular seems like a bad fit for supporting it?

I would imagine most of Labour's base was oppsoed to the war, and in fact I would not be surprised if there were more supporters of the war among the Conservatives in 2002!

Why did Blair side with Bush over Chirac and Schröder? Especially when Blairism is not that far from what Schröder was doing in Germany

Prior to Iraq, (& I know this is hard to imagine, but) liberal interventionism was on its way to becoming more-or-less pretty universally accepted as a good policy. Specifically, Blair was worshiped as a hero in Kosovo & Sierra Leone for pushing intervention there to end conflicts. There were literally kids in Kosovo named Tonibler, & two of the main streets in Pristina are Bill Clinton Ave. & Tony Blair Ave. So he was very gung ho on keeping it going.

Blair was also obsessed with what his 'legacy' would be after he'd left office (ironic given the state it's in now). This obsession with how he'd be remembered was quite prominently satirized on The Thick of It.

So, it's 2003. The UK had helped the US go into Afghanistan, which garnered them no bad press, & was even supported by Russia. The view of much of the world was that the West could act unilaterally in anyway they wanted.

A section in Raymond Geuss' Politics and the Imagination where he quotes a senior Foreign Office Diplomat's memoirs from ~2002, when the planning stages for Iraq were in motion, provides some pretty good insight into Blair's mindset at the time:

Before the invasion of Iraq a group of experts on the Middle East met with Blair to warn him: the situation in Iraq, they claimed, was complex; one would have to have a very clear idea of what one planned to do, how one would organise the occupation and reconstruction of the country, etc. Blair is said to have listened with evident annoyance and increasing disinterest, and to have repeatedly interrupted the experts with the rhetorical question: 'But Saddam is evil, isn't he?'

So, yeah. If one removes any conspiracy-esque theories about Haliburton or money, etc., Iraq - for Blair - was gonna be his primary legacy project. It's a large country compared to his previous international escapades, & it had a very poor track record on human rights (e.g., the Kurds, etc.), so if it had all worked out, & they managed to turn it into another liberal democracy, then it would've cemented Blair's reputation as one of the most successful post-war PMs.

[brucejoel99]

Or 22, in Blair's case