As you know, there are hundreds of local and regional elections happening in England and Wales in May this year, including Council, Mayoral and Police & Crime Commissioner elections.

They present us with an excellent opportunity to make huge gains across the country, and for your local party to make a big impact in your local area.

To help you get off to a flying start with your local campaign, the Campaigns team is organising an Action Weekend from 20th – 22nd March.

Our goal? To knock on 100,000 doors across England and Wales over the weekend.

But to do this, we need you. We need as many local parties as possible to get involved by running dedicated events and campaigning sessions in your local area.

This coordinated weekend of campaigning will help to boost the profile of the party across the country and build momentum ahead of the elections. It’s also a good chance to get your newer members involved in campaigning for the first time.

The first step is to get your local event on the events page to ensure members and supporters can find it and RSVP.

Get my event on the website

The Campaigns team have also produced a National Action Weekend Pack.

Remember, there’s at least one election happening in every area, and if you’re not sure which ones are happening locally you can check on the Electoral Commission website using their postcode checker

Liberal Democrats have long demanded fundamental reforms to the distribution of power: proportional voting, decentralisation, an elected second chamber.  

Sadly, electoral reform has been lacking entirely from the Labour party’s leadership contest. That’s why, this week, I’ve written to the three remaining Labour leadership candidates, urging them to ditch our broken voting system in favour of proportional representation.

Read the letter in full below.

In this general election, the Liberal Democrats’ vote share went up by 4%, and we ended up with one less MP.

The Tories had a 1% increase in support, and got a majority of 80.

Our electoral system is broken. pic.twitter.com/771yRPBbDk

— Liberal Democrats (@LibDems) December 17, 2019

The last three years, more than any before, has shown politics isn’t working for people. It is broken. Now is the time to hit the reset button.

After the last General Election, 14.5 million people have an MP they didn’t vote for.

At the last General Election the Conservatives, despite only getting 44% of votes, entered the House of Commons with 56% of seats. 14.5 million people have an MP they didn’t vote for, while 71% of votes were “wasted”. In Scotland, the situation was even worse, with the SNP securing 80% of the seats from 45% of the popular vote.

It is no wonder that people feel they have little or no influence on decision-making today. Our democracy doesn’t need piecemeal change. It needs an urgent and radical overhaul at all levels.

There are many issues we disagree on. But progressives right across UK, aside from Labour, agree that we have a decaying electoral system that shuts out too many from our democracy.

With a Prime Minister in Boris Johnson who tried to silence our democracy by unlawfully shutting down Parliament, nobody can trust him to fix our broken politics or the systems that support it.

So far in the Labour leadership contest, electoral reform has been dangerously absent.

It therefore isn’t good enough for the next Labour leader to sit on their hands and do nothing. It is past time Labour joined the progressive alliance in favour of electoral reform.

So far in the Labour leadership contest, electoral reform has been dangerously absent. I am therefore writing to you to urge you to make clear your support to align Labour with the growing progressive movement across the UK in favour of electoral reform.

Kind regards,

Wendy Chamberlain

Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Constitutional Affairs

The Liberal Democrats are working hard to tackle the big issues that people are facing across the UK.

✔︎ Ensuring a properly resourced NHS, to provide the highest quality care for our loved ones

✔︎ Fighting to reverse police cuts, to protect our communities from violent crime

✔︎ Protecting our environment. We’ve already done more to fight the climate emergency than any other party

✔︎ Building high-quality, reliable public transport links across the UK

✔︎ Investing in world-class education, to give our children the best start possible in life

We want to see an open, inclusive, outward-looking and optimistic United Kingdom. 

That’s who we are. That is what we will be. And that is the future we will build.

If those are your values too, why not join us today?

The first time you go canvassing can feel daunting. For many people, going up to a stranger’s door, knocking, and starting a conversation isn’t something they do every day. They don’t often ask people about how they want things to change, in their neighbourhood or across the country as a whole.

More than 1 in 4 of us will experience depression, anxiety or stress this year. Almost every family will be affected.

But with practice and repetition, what may have initially seemed like an odd thing to do begins to feel natural. And even fun. It turns out that many people like being asked about their opinions, especially by someone who clearly cares, is open to listening and taking them seriously.

At our latest meeting, the Federal Board welcomed our newest member, Lisa Smart, who has been elected the new chair of the Federal Communications and Elections Committee (FCEC), taking over from James Gurling. Welcome on board, Lisa!

We also welcomed back to the Board Tony Harris as Registered Treasurer and chair of the Federal Finance and Resources Committee (FFRC) and Mike German as Federal Treasurer.

Details of the outcome of elections for other key posts around the party are available on the party website. Congratulations to everyone elected and thank you also to everyone else who applied, helping to give us a strong set of names to choose from.

After our January Board meeting agreed the timings and got the ball rolling on key elements for our success this year, such as an independent elections review and our leadership election, the Board concentrated this time in particular on the Federal Party’s budget.

We’re rightly focused on ensuring we improve how we operate on your behalf

To give some context, overall our income in 2020 will be around £6.5 million, which compares with £34 million for the Conservatives and £46 million for Labour in 2018.

After the surge in spending and staffing in the immediate run-up to the general election, the Board agreed that this year we need to return to a long-term sustainable level of staffing and expenditure. This means day-to-day spending matching income from members, donors and grants, with any surplus from last year ring-fenced to allow us to implement recommendations from the independent elections review and for one-off projects focused on transforming our capabilities.