Political

Major change in Lib Dem campaigning approach set out by new Director of Campaigns

The new Liberal Democrat Director of Campaigns and Elections Shaun Roberts is spot on with his three priorities, set out in the latest edition of the party’s Ad Lib magazine:

Shaun Roberts - Director of Campaigns - top priorities

Building a core vote for the Lib Dems: the 20% strategy

The third point, of course, is particularly good to see as it shows the impact that those of us pushing for a core votes bases strategy are having in changing the direction of the party.

The significance of the wording of the second point – with the phrase “deliver change” – is easy to overlook but just as important.

Traditionally Lib Dem campaigns at national level have focused on promoting the party’s policies at rather than directly bringing about change. The usual approach has been to campaign for X to get votes, rather than to get something changed before the next election.

Shaun, however, comes to his role from Which?, bringing a great understanding of how successful campaigning organisations need to pick campaigns which demonstrate step by step changes to the world. That is the way you keep people motivated, build a larger team and generate momentum rather than campaigning on the basis of ‘X is really important – and join us to campaign to, er…, do it once we have a Lib Dem majority government’.

Put together the second and third points are a plan for a very different sort of campaigning party. Which is absolutely right and will hopefully build on the approach to campaigning Shaun and I wrote about together in a booklet a few years ago.

All three of Shaun’s points are something I’m going to talk about more in the next edition of Liberal Democrat Newswire – sign up here.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

All comments and data you submit with them will be handled in line with the privacy and moderation policies.