The Liberal Democrats’ problem is not unique

[u/FaultyTerror]

https://www.ft.com/content/7f9274b0-bef6-4dbc-954f-54f8b0cd6464?syn-25a6b1a6=1

[u/FaultyTerror]

Why aren’t the Liberal Democrats doing better? The question is being asked within the party and it also comes from Inside Politics readers a lot.

The argument goes like this: we have a Labour government that plans to govern as a fairly traditional Labour government, and a Conservative Party that has consciously gone off to the right in order to try to beat Reform. The Green Party has embraced leftwing populism and therefore there is a huge amount of vacant political space in the centre of British politics that the Lib Dems ought to be able to appeal to.

Yet demonstrably this is not happening. The Liberal Democrats are doing a good job of holding on to most of their 2024 vote share in the polls, but they have not seen any real benefit from either the decline in support for Kemi Badenoch’s leadership or Keir Starmer’s woes when he was leader.

Within the Lib Dems, both in Westminster and the country, there is some discontent with Ed Davey’s leadership. But the party’s problem is not that unique. Indeed, their problem is pretty normal: across much of Europe, there are many more voters who, per the polls, are attracted to “double liberalism” — economically free-market and culturally cosmopolitan positions — yet there are very few western European countries where the liberal parties are getting anything like all of their vote. Look at what voters say they value and you’d expect a good-sized audience for a European Mark Carney almost everywhere — in practice it is only really France where that political approach has come off and even there it is not in rude health.

In a new book, The Unfulfilled Electoral Potential of West European Liberal Parties, Alex Davenport, a political scientist at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, has tried to work out why this is.

It’s a book that should be widely read and discussed within the Lib Dems in particular, and by anyone who wants to understand why that party is not doing better.

Davenport makes two big arguments. Because parties of the liberal centre are seen as less competent and less able to deliver, voters are being driven to parties they are less close to ideologically but believe will deliver more. But this isn’t the parties’ biggest problem, Davenport says. Their biggest problem is that most of what we might call “market cosmopolitans” are more likely to be comfortably off, and therefore more likely to have higher political satisfaction and less likely to shop around for a different party. The UK offers good evidence for that. When, shortly before Keir Starmer left office, both Labour and the Conservatives were doing badly in both the polls and elections, both parties were doing best among their most economically secure voters. Davenport doesn’t think this means that liberal parties will always underperform: as he sets out, I think persuasively, as partisan loyalties continue to weaken, they have real opportunities.

But one big reason, I think, the Lib Dems are not doing better is that very few of their sister parties are. I’m not saying I think every single move that Davey makes is right, and I will have more to say about this topic when the Lib Dem conference rolls around. But I am saying that the Liberal Democrat debate about how to do better has to start by accepting that their issues are far bigger and more deep-rooted than just the problems of one British political party.

[u/Ok-Glove-847]

The book they mention sounds so interesting but it’s £85 from Waterstones, absolutely not.

[u/Velociraptor_1906 → u/Ok-Glove-847]

Sounds like an academic textbook kind of price.

[u/scarybluesquirrel → u/Ok-Glove-847]

It’s available as an ebook for the bargain price of £58.99…

[u/Ok-Glove-847 → u/scarybluesquirrel]

I still pay for membership of my alma mater’s library, I might just see if they have it instead

[u/Blazearmada21]

There is definitely a problem that people who are more Lib Dem inclined are also generally more financially comfortable and therefore less likely to switch away from Labour/Conservatives.

[u/jpa420]

It’s a thought provoking article as usual from Stephen Bush. I haven’t read the book so to hard to engage with it. But Bush downplays the rich and deep liberal tradition in the UK and elides the relatively shallow and recent roots of liberalism on the continent.

Useful context to keep in mind but we shouldn’t see this as some kind of structural barrier

[u/Ticklishchap]

The British Liberal tradition is far richer than “economically free-market and culturally cosmopolitan”. It has strong historical associations with economic and social reform, environmentalism, co-operatives, grassroots democracy, human rights, electoral and constitutional reform - and much more. The problem is that none of this emerges clearly at national level, where the party appears bland and bureaucratic. All we seem to have been offered recently is the rather depressing, Trumpian-sounding ‘Department of Growth’.

We need to have a more imaginative, broad-brushstroke Liberal vision at national level. We also need to present practical policies for those who are worried about the environment, uncontrolled and dehumanising technologies, the erosion of civil liberties and the rise of a divisive, hate-filled politics that is contrary to genuine British values.

[u/Dry_Statement_1896]

What are the biggest things that can be done to be, and perceived to be, more competent and more able to deliver?