This week’s local elections have mostly been framed as a contest between two options: first, whether the Tories will be given a punishment beating by the electorate over recent scandals; or, second, whether Labour will underperform, giving a second thought to whether or not they can win big again. But there is a third dynamic concerning how the Lib Dems will do, especially how well they will perform in parts of the south of England and particularly in Tory-held constituencies that they will be targeting at the next general election.
The Lib Dems have managed some remarkable breakthroughs in recent by-elections, namely in Chesham and Amersham and North Shropshire, the latter being particularly impressive given it had always been a safe Tory seat. Those in CCHQ will be asking how serious the threat is from the Lib Dems in safe southern seats and, if there is a concern here, how best to handle it.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the Lib Dems don’t really have a national pitch. In fact, they do not have a single, recognisable identity that translates across all parts of the country. This appears to be intentional – it seems like the strategy is to run as a hyper-local campaign in every seat they target, focusing only on those issues that they think will get through to voters in each particular constituency. There are two big problems with this approach.
The Lib Dems don’t seem to have a national-level attack on the Conservatives that goes beyond ‘Boris is rubbish’
One is that people naturally think more locally at local elections and by-elections, but much less so at general elections. When I think of the Lib Dems’ current ‘go local’ strategy, I am reminded of their plan to do pretty much the same thing in 2015. The thinking then was that the combination of incumbency and sand-bagging their fortresses would see them hold at least 25 seats, allowing them to be kingmakers again. It didn’t work then and there is little reason to think it will work in the near future, particularly as they don’t have the incumbency advantage in most places any longer.
The second problem is that when you run in a by-election or in local elections, you aren’t tied to a national manifesto that everyone can get their hands on. In Chesham and Amersham, for instance, they ran as a Nimby party, ignoring the fact that they are ostensibly pro-housebuilding at a national level. But try that when you have a manifesto, which Tories and Labour can attack in hustings and on leaflets, and it becomes way, way harder to pull this off.
Given these two problems, should the Tories worry about the Lib Dems, particularly if they do well in the locals on Thursday? Well, yes and no.
No, in that the Liberal Democrat strategy seems to be based on this: if the Tories remain in their slump and perhaps become even more unelectable, the Lib Dems are in prime position to snag several of their seats. If you haven’t spotted the flaw in this plan, don’t worry because no one working in the heart of the Lib Dems seems to have worked it out yet either: it is an entirely passive mode of attack. It relies on the Tories sticking with Boris Johnson as leader and for the Tories to sink further into the electoral mire. There is nothing proactive about this strategy, at least as far as I can tell.
But there are still reasons why the Tories should be worried. If they really do continue to sink under Boris Johnson, then it’s entirely possible that the Lib Dems could take some of their seats, maybe even double-digit numbers of them. Except that if this were to happen, it would probably mean that the Conservative party was on for a pasting nationwide, meaning that they would have bigger concerns to deal with elsewhere involving the Labour party.
It is often observed that for a Conservative voter to flip to the Lib Dems, there needs to be a Labour leader they don’t despise. Most Lib Dem voters know their party leader isn’t going to be declaring victory outside No. 10, far likelier is the Lib Dems propping up a Labour government. So for a Tory to Lib Dem flipper, they need to be comfortable with the idea of a Labour-led government. Keir Starmer is perhaps the Lib Dems’ most useful asset at the moment.
So even if the Lib Dems do well in Tory areas, there is not much that CCHQ can really do about it. The Lib Dems don’t seem to have a national-level attack on the Conservatives that goes beyond ‘Boris is rubbish’. And there’s not much you can do about that apart from making Boris appear less rubbish or simply getting rid of him. Whether the Lib Dems do well is based on factors outside of the party’s control – all they can do is ride the larger political currents and hope for the best. Strategic ambiguity is perhaps the most effective, if not cynical, way of riding those currents.
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