It’s a warm Saturday afternoon in London and I’m door-knocking with Nine Elms candidate Sue Wixley near Battersea Power Station. A heavy-set man struggling to stop his kitten from escaping from his flat answers the door, we introduce ourselves and ask him if he’d vote for us on Thursday. He’s direct at first, “Why should I?”. So we start to take him through the community work we’ve been doing round what is a brand new neighbourhood. “See the thing is I voted for Nick Clegg, many of my friends did too, and then tuition fees . . .”, the conversation continued. It’s never easy getting people disappointed with the worst aspects of the Coalition government to switch back to us but he gave us a fair hearing. Eventually local knowledge – a detailed picture built on surveys, endless door knocking and open meetings won him over (As well as being able to stop his kitten from making a break for it).
I wasn’t sure he’d really vote for us, nevertheless I said to Sue as we approached the next door, “That’s progress, two or three years ago that guy wouldn’t have wanted to talk at all.” All politics is local, and even in a big city like London, knowing the character of a neighbourhood can make all the difference. I’ve passed Battersea Power Station going into Victoria several thousand times in my life, from the train line every new apartment block looks luxurious. Canvassing in Nine Elms, a mix of council rented, shared ownership and conventional private ownership looks can be very deceiving – nearly everyone we talked to was already being hit hard by rising utility bills, despite living in brand new buildings with box fresh low energy appliances and modern standards of insulation.
It’s the misfortune of Wandsworth Lib Dems to be right on the fault line between Conservatives and Labour in Central London, it’s a borough that is fiercely fought over. Nine Elms, however, is set to see its population rise from 2,000 to 12,000 by 2026 with many young professionals and anglo-Europeans moving in – our target demographics. With enough help from the outside this massive regeneration pocket could turn amber. I like what Sue and Mark Gitsham are doing here – spotting an opportunity and getting in on the ground floor – and if we don’t succeed it won’t be for lack of diligence or effort.
A day earlier I’d been in Blackheath and the neighbourhood feel was totally different, a homely council estate where not much had changed in a while. I was part of a small team including candidates Helen Steel* and Ben Maguire that canvassed the area next to the train station. The streets were quiet enough so that children left their play equipment outside – there was no crime or road safety worry. One house even had a ruggedised exercise bike just outside its front door (hidden behind a hedge, mind). This was solid Labour territory, Lewisham is famous for being dominated by the red rose party, however there was little enthusiasm for them. Labour’s longstanding dominance has led to a lack of engagement, which is precisely why we stand and campaign hard. Lots of issues coming up on the doorstep not tackled by Lewisham Labour – cuts to bus and train services, and the hollowing out of the High St, Blackheath is becoming a tourist trap with too many coffee shops and no Post Office. Our team, headed up by Chris Maines, closed the gap in Blackheath and if Labour’s monopoly on Lewisham is to be broken anywhere it will be Lib Dems doing it.
Liberal Buddhas of Suburbia
When I first started making plans to get involved in the London Locals the most obvious port of call was Bromley. Why? Bromley Conservatives led an extremely charmed life in 2018, winning 50 out of 60 seats off the back of just 44% of the vote. They couldn’t defy gravity and Bromley Lib Dems finished a close 2nd in Bromley Town and Copers Cope last time. Even just a 1-2% vote share uplift and we could go from Zero to Six councillors, I thought. In the end I wasn’t too wide of the mark, we won 5/6 target seats. It must be stressed that outer SE London is mostly not fertile ground for us, historically an inelastic block of loyal Conservative support with the exception of Orpington, which is nearly detached from metropolitan London anyway. Bromley Lib Dems have gamely swum against the tide, and how. I came in last minute to witness an extraordinarily high level of response on the doorstep – this was because everyone in the leafy streets close to Bromley South train station had been thoroughly prepped by the likes of Julie Ireland, Sam Webber and Graeme Casey – the local party started campaigning in January, they were on their 10th leaflet and 4th round of doorknocking.
Another conversation stuck with me that shows a turning of the tide, one guy, “I can’t vote for anyone at the moment, and certainly not you, you’re not democrats. I’ve voted Lib Dem in the past and never again, all of my friends won’t either.” In my experience the Brexit-boosters have a tendency to over-egg the pudding – most of my friends are not Lib Dem voters so it’s a very rare beast – the betrayed anti-European Liberal, whose friends are all ex-Liberals too. I mark this convo down as progress. Why? This is a very similar dynamic to what happened in America after Watergate. A lot of die-hard Republicans were so disgusted and appalled at the behaviour of Nixon, they couldn’t bring themselves to switch to the Democrats so they walked away from party politics altogether. Many didn’t vote in 1976 and if they were community spirited they channelled their efforts into NGOs instead.
In the context of no tangible improvements to peoples’ lives via Brexit, and the car crash that is the Johnson government many ERG Conservatives will stay at home come the next election – they feel angry, embarrassed and betrayed, however instinctively they can’t bring themselves to vote for the parties that told them they were wrong all along.
I’ve picked out two challenging conversations, I’d like to add there was a great deal of positivity too, ‘Yes I’m voting for you, you’re the change we need,’ was a response I heard many times, and one particularly memorable encounter – 93-year-old Pamela in Bromley North, a lifelong Labour voter switching to us for the first time to make sure the Tories were turfed out because she knew it was so close last time – sharp as a tack and sharing jokes with us on polling day.
European future for a World City
What’s the future for the Lib Dems in London? This year represents good progress – up by 25 seats to 177 and returning to several councils where we had no representation in 2018 – Brent, Lambeth, Bromley and Croydon. This is short of our high water mark – we went from a handful of Cllrs in the mid-70s to 323 in 1994 – a 20-year march after which we plateaued. I believe the lack of growth thereafter was not for want of trying from activists but structural limitations – a lack of media support and coverage, lack of landed-gentry/corporate/trades union funding and club network.
Future growth potential is definitely there – we’re a long way short of 300 cllrs though reaching that level was during an era when we where the main vessel for protest votes, in 1994 only 31 seats were won by Others (Greens/Indies/Localists), this year the total is 78. London should be a Lib Dem stronghold, however, its population is younger and better educated than the national average and in years to come there will be a significant anglo-European demographic joining the electorate – babies born after the 2004 immigration surge are just turning 18 now.
*This is not the same Helen Steel from the Greenpeace London McLibel trial
returnoftheliberal 