27 Sep Lib Dem conference – A national Conference for local issues?
“Sunny” Bournemouth, the setting for this year’s Liberal Democrat conference.
Liberal Democrat conferences are strange affairs.
It’s easy to dismiss them as unimportant talking shops, and it’s true that even die-hard party activists are not betting on Ed Davey to be making the next early morning speech on the steps of Downing Street.
But such a dismissal would be premature.
Of the four elections in the 2010s, only one delivered a substantial overall majority for a single party. Labour’s poll lead is likely to narrow through an election campaign and in a world where landslides are the exception rather than the rule, smaller parties like the Lib Dems could have an outsized impact on what happens after the next election.
Recent by-election successes demonstrate that the Liberal Democrats have regained their pre-coalition status as an acceptable alternative for both Labour and Tory voters. They have also highlighted that the Lib Dems are squarely targeting Conservative seats in leafy suburbs and commuter towns; party strategists are keen to stress that Lib Dems are in second place in some 80 Tory-held seats. That means an efficiently targeted Lib Dem campaign could be a deciding factor in whether the Conservatives lose their majority come the next election (just as the fate of the SNP in Scotland may determine the scale of Labour successes nationally). Furthermore, if the final results are narrow, the Lib Dems (and other small parties) could once again find themselves as kingmakers.
Despite this, there was little discussion of coalitions or confidence and supply agreements among party members in Bournemouth (although Ed Davey wouldn’t rule out formal post-election deals). Instead, policy discussions prioritised topics such as local bus services and community policing, the sorts of local issues which have long been the bread and butter of Liberal Democrat campaigns, and which be delivered through the party’s local government base.
A clear example of this was the (atypically fractious) debate over whether to abolish a single national housing target. Although the target was kept (as part of a larger motion to boost housing supply), it was clear that party leadership wanted the target abolished, to give more latitude for local campaigns to oppose unpopular development in leafy suburbs and commuter towns.
Health and social care discussions also skewed local. On more than one occasion, Daisy Cooper MP, Lib Dem health and social care spokesperson, described this as the party’s number one priority in the run up to the next election. But large-scale national commitments were generally avoided, with the party even retiring a longstanding commitment to increase income tax rates by one percent to fund health and social care.
Instead, the focus was on public health and prevention – focuses which can be delivered through local government, even while being positioned nationally. Cooper’s conference speech homed in on the need for early intervention in mental ill-health, in order to enable people to live healthier lives and to reduce the pressures on acute mental health services. The party passed a substantive policy motion committing to a raft of public health measures including restricting marketing for products high in sugar, salt and fat, a government-backed campaign to get people more active (backed by a dedicated bank holiday) and the phased restoration of public health grants (a rare direct spending commitment). Supporting and valuing social care was a key theme on the fringe circuit, with sessions led by the National Care Forum and by the IPPR. Even the conference app leant into this theme, with sponsorship from the coalition on cancer screening.
Of course, national issues were still on the agenda. Debates on topics such as period poverty, climate change, voter ID and support for Ukraine leant into traditional liberal values, and the party leader, Ed Davey, ended conferences by committing to improve cancer care (arguably a more salient issue than the cost-of-living crises in the affluent suburbs the party is targeting). Nonetheless, the party seems to have learnt lessons from recent electoral disappointments and is focused on taking the party’s commons representation to between 20 and 50 seats and displacing the SNP as the third party in the Commons. But one crucial question remains; “what would the Liberal Democrats then do in the event of a hung parliament”?
Many party members would love to see Lib Dems taking wholesale control of delivery departments such as transport, levelling-up or health and social care – certainly this model would make it easier to point to Lib Dem achievements in government, than the “partial presence in each department” model of 2010-15. However, given the impact of coalition on party support and representation, I think it is unlikely that members would vote to approve any new coalition agreement (as required by the party’s constitution). A more realistic outcome might be informal support for a minority government, perhaps in exchange for delivery of a headline party policy such as electoral reform. This would allow Lib Dems keep focusing on implementing local priorities in the councils they control.
Whether they get the opportunity may well be determined by how efficiently the party can target their extensive ground campaign in the coming months.