Prof Peter Sloman
Professor of British Politics, University of Cambridge. He has published widely on Liberal politics and on economic and social policy debates in modern Britain.
Email: pjs93@cam.ac.uk
Twitter: @pjsloman
UK Election 2024
Section 4: Parties and the campaign
34. A changed but over-staged Labour Party and the political marketing weaknesses behind Starmer’s win (Prof Jennifer Lees-Marshment)
35. To leaflet or not to leaflet? The question of election leafleting in Sunderland Central (Prof Angela Smith, Dr Mike Pearce)
36. Beyond ‘my dad was a toolmaker’: what it’s really like to be working class in parliament (Dr Vladimir Bortun)
37. The unforced errors of foolish men: gender, race and the calculus of harm (Prof Karen Ross)
38. Election 2024 and rise of Reform UK: the beginning of the end of the Conservatives? (Dr Anthony Ridge-Newman)
39. The Weakening of the Blue Wall (Prof Pete Dorey)
40. The Conservative party, 1832-2024: an obituary (Dr Mark Garnett)
41. Bouncing back: the Liberal Democrat campaign (Prof Peter Sloman)
42. The Greens: riding two horses (Prof Neil Carter, Dr Mitya Pearson)
43. Party organisations and the campaign (Dr Danny Rye)
44. Local campaign messaging at the 2024 General Election (Dr Siim Trumm, Prof Caitlin Milazzo)
45. The value of getting personal: reflecting upon the role of personal branding in the General Election (Dr Jenny Lloyd)
46. Which constituencies were visited by each party leader and what this told us about their campaigns (Dr Hannah Bunting, Joely Santa Cruz)
47. The culture wars and the 2024 General Election campaign (Prof John Steel)
48. “Rishi’s D-Day Disaster”: authority, leadership and British military commemoration (Dr Natalie Jester)
49. Party election broadcasts: the quest for authenticity (Dr Vincent Campbell)
The 2024 general election represented a remarkable comeback for the Liberal Democrats. Less than a decade on from the coalition and the 2015 election debacle, Sir Ed Davey’s party reclaimed third-party status in the House of Commons with 72 seats – the largest Liberal or Liberal Democrat total since the 1920s. The party’s success in ousting Conservative MPs across large swathes of southern England vindicated Davey’s exuberant but highly disciplined approach to campaigning.
In planning their 2024 campaign, the Liberal Democrats had four major advantages over 2017 and 2019. Firstly, the 2019 election had created a well-defined electoral battleground, with the party in second place (on the revised boundaries) in 98 seats – 85 of which were held by the Conservatives. Secondly, Sir Keir Starmer’s election as Labour leader – and Labour’s subsequent policy shifts – made floating voters in these seats less concerned by the prospect of a Labour government. Thirdly, by-elections and local elections showed that Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters were increasingly willing to vote tactically to defeat Tory incumbents. Finally, a succession of strong local election performances helped the Liberal Democrats to rebuild their councillor base, including in Leave-voting West Country seats where Conservative MPs had won large majorities in 2019.
From the Chesham and Amersham by-election in June 2021 onwards, it was clear that winning over former Conservative voters in so-called “Blue Wall” seats would be the main focus of Davey’s leadership. As with Starmer’s efforts to reposition Labour, this involved an element of ‘ideological quietism’ – including a retreat from Jo Swinson’s anti-Brexit stance – which created some frustration among party activists. Membership fell from a peak of 126,000 at the end of 2019 to less than 74,000 at the end of 2021, and dissent broke out into the open in November 2023 when 30 senior Liberal Democrats called for the party to set out more “distinctive positions” – including rejoining the EU single market – in a letter to the Guardian. Conference delegates also defied the leadership’s efforts to drop a commitment to a national housebuilding target, reflecting a tension between the views of party activists and the perceived electoral needs of rural candidates. With Tory seats to be won, however, these divisions were largely smoothed over by the time the campaign began.
The manifesto centred on a £9.8bn plan to invest in the National Health Service and social care, with efforts to tackle sewage dumping a major subsidiary theme. Increased spending would be paid for by a miscellany of tax rises on wealthy investors and big firms, some of which drew criticism from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and other experts. Though Davey was prepared to defend these tax rises, he largely shied away from populist rhetoric and focussed instead on making the case for investment in public services. Likewise, although the manifesto outflanked Labour on issues such as welfare policy (where the Liberal Democrats promised to scrap the benefit cap and the two-child limit), direct attacks on Labour were kept to a minimum.
Media coverage of the campaign was dominated by Davey’s stunts – falling off a paddleboard on Windermere, bungee-jumping in Eastbourne, and demolishing a row of blue dominoes in Taunton. Davey claimed that his antics were designed to draw attention to serious policy points, such as sewage problems and mental health funding, as well as providing ‘good visuals’ that would help the party gain news coverage. Though the novelty was beginning to wear thin by the end of the campaign, the stunts succeeded in raising Davey’s profile without exposing him to the sharp personal and policy-based attacks which Tim Farron and Jo Swinson had faced. Davey’s willingness to talk about his personal experiences as a carer also provided the basis for an emotionally resonant party election broadcast on 5th June, which dovetailed neatly with the party’s focus on health and social care. This allowed candidates to fight a vigorous “ground war” in Conservative-held target seats without having to deal with nationally-generated controversies.
As the Conservative campaign faltered, the Liberal Democrat strategy turned out to be remarkably effective. Under Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy, seat gains had been built on “incremental targeting”; this time, the Liberal Democrats swept across southern England picking up clusters of seats – 6 gains in Surrey, 5 in Sussex, 4 in Oxfordshire, and 11 across Devon and Somerset – often with comfortable majorities. Alongside its gains from the Tories in England, the party also took 4 seats from the SNP in Scotland. All in all, 46% of the Liberal Democrat vote came in the 72 seats the party won – a testimony to both campaign efficiency and tactical voting. If leaning into a “cosmopolitan” and pro-European identity between 2016 and 2019 helped the Liberal Democrats survive and develop new areas of strength in south-east England, Davey’s decision to lean back out of these cultural divides seems to have paid off by delivering a larger parliamentary recovery than most thought possible. The Liberal Democrats have some hard thinking to do about policy and strategy in the new Parliament. Nevertheless, the 2024 result shows how a well-calibrated third-party campaign can help candidates to make hay while the sun shines.
