We’re a party of community, kindness and liberal values.

We want to make sure everyone out there knows they are welcome

We want to make sure everyone out there knows they are welcome. All members deserve to feel welcome throughout their membership journey. That’s why we’re launching a diversity & inclusion survey today.

We want to take this opportunity to reach out to local parties. This is your chance to tell us how we can best help you. We want to help you engage with communities in your area at a grassroots level and include members from underrepresented groups.

As liberals, Hong Kong’s fight is our fight.

A year on from the beginning of the protests in Hong Kong, the Chinese government haven’t budged. Beijing continues to systematically violate the human rights of people in Hong Kong, and deny the region democracy. 

But Hong Kong is not giving up. The people of Hong Kong are not going to back down from this fight.

During the Handover, the UK promised Hong Kongers that their rights and freedoms would be enhanced and protected – including progress towards universal suffrage. Yet, just over a decade on, the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ arrangement has faded into a shadow of what it was supposed to be.

Thank you!

Whether you’re a Police and Crime Commissioner Candidate, a Mayoral Candidate, a GLA candidate, a Council Candidate or one of the thousands of Liberal Democrat activists that help get them elected, we want to say thank you.

The time and effort you give is what makes our party tick and without you, we couldn’t achieve the change at every level of government we all are fighting for. We hope you find this page useful as you prepare for the 2020 local elections.

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