Lib Dem conference 2021: what’s behind 27% drop in party membership?

The Liberal Democrats will kick off their annual party conference this weekend amid diminishing support for the party.

Membership has fallen by 27%, according to internal documents seen by the PA news agency. The London Evening Standard reported that “some members said the fall was due, in part, to the party vocally opposing now-ditched planning reforms during the by-election in Chesham and Amersham” back in June.

The Lib Dem leadership’s apparent opposition to urban development was causing young members to “become more and more dejected by the day”, said Freddie Poser, a former party organiser for the Westminster and City Liberal Democrats.

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“On planning, specifically, the campaign was run entirely on this nimby basis,” Poser said, referencing the “not in my back yard” acronym used to characterise residents’ protests against proposed building projects.

He added: “If our next general election campaign were on this basis, how could I stand on the doorstep and fight for a party that I know is not doing the things they know have to be done to tackle the housing crisis? I’d certainly consider my future campaigning for the party.”

Despite such concerns, Lib Dem candidate Sarah Green won the by-election, overturned a 16,000-plus Conservative majority to win the Buckinghamshire seat by 8,028 votes.

At the time, Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said the result had “sent a shockwave through British politics”.

But following the drop in party membership, Philip Collins argued in The New Statesman that Davey has failed to pull the Lib Dems out of “Labour’s shadow.”

Under Davey, the party’s fourth leader in six years, “the Liberal Democrats have all but disappeared”, said Collins. They “ought to be the repository of all those who vote ‘none of the above’”, he wrote, but “it is not obvious to what question the party is the answer”.

Former leader Paddy Ashdown “used to be very good at getting above the political fray, posing effectively as a neutral figure for whom anyone tired of politics as usual could vote”, Collins continued. Lately, however, “it’s hard to recall an intriguing position the party has taken on anything”.

But plans are being drawn up to try to regain the Lib Dems’ political clout, according to The Telegraph. Leaked “campaign literature” shows that the party has created a “promise-breaker hit list” of 20 Tory MPs backing Boris Johnson’s National Insurance rise, the paper said.

The Lib Dems will reportedly focus on “Blue wall” seats, amid hopes that voters who usually back the Conservatives will turn on Johnson for breaking his manifesto commitments.

Party strategists calculate that if they can convince one in ten of these voters to back the Lib Dems, “they could flip scores of Tory seats”, the paper said.