Party Strategy Consultation

Our record 72 MPs, and net gains in every round of local elections in the last Westminster Parliament, have put us in a strong position to continue the party’s growth during this Parliament in local elections, devolved elections and at the next Westminster general election.

A strength of our approach in the last Parliament was the clarity of focusing on a small number of objectives year after year, ensuring a consistency of approach and helping make the most of everyone’s contributions.

The current political landscape for us is both hopeful and uncertain. The longer-term popularity of both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition will be important factors in determining how great our electoral prospects are against Labour and the Conservatives. While we can influence this to a degree, our overall approach needs to be open to exploiting the opportunities which turn out to be most fruitful. 

However, we will want to - and are likely to need to - look beyond simply those places where we won or were a close second at the last Westminster general election for future Parliamentary gains. 

During this Parliament we need to:

1. Use our newly enhanced political power, at all levels of government, to promote our policy agenda, as updated later in this Parliament by the current policy review, and to repay the trust that millions of voters placed in us at the general election by doing what we said we would do and focusing on the public's priorities.
2. Hold the Labour Government in Westminster and devolved governments to account, providing the responsible opposition any democracy needs, while also holding the Conservative Party to account for the terrible damage it has done.
3. Ensure that our 72 MPs are firmly embedded in all their constituencies, protecting our gains from 2024 and allowing us to look to further gains in future.
4. Broaden our party’s strength across all of Britain  by continuing to make gains at all other levels of election, including the Welsh Senedd and Scottish Parliament elections in 2026.
5. In order to deliver on these ambitions, make our organisational priorities:
   1. Incumbency support for our MPs;
   2. Maintaining an extensive network of campaign staff, supporting both target seats and broader development, including winning local elections;
   3. Create and implement a plan for regional elections such as Metro Mayors and Police and Crime Commissioners, focusing on winning where possible and otherwise using the elections for capacity building;
   4. Building up a new generation of target seats, particularly in Labour-facing areas;
   5. Improving our diversity, with a specific priority of improving the ethnic diversity of our local government base, our target seat Parliamentary candidates and our membership and volunteers; and
   6. Growing our member and volunteer base in order to Improving our grassroots campaigning capacity, expanding the talent pool available to fill party posts and broaden our fundraising base. 

Success on these priorities will strengthen our ability to give everyone the power to make the most of their potential and have real freedom to decide how they live their lives. It will be a great stride towards building the fair, free and open society we all want to see.