Why the Lib Dems are aiming for second – with Al Pinkerton MP & Mark Pack
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 19 April 2026
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Liberal Democrat peer Mark Pack and MP for Surrey Heath Al Pinkerton join James Heale to explain that it is a matter of 'when not if' the party become the second biggest in local government. Overtaking the Conservatives would be 'seismic' but they see it as inevitable, following a 'long-run of sustained wins' in the post-coalition Lib Dem era.
Faced with criticism that the Lib Dems are too focused on community and that leader Ed Davey is more interested in stunts than policy, they explain that a 'rich and varied' diet of political communication has never been more necessary, and that they will never apologise for taking up the causes that matter to their constituents. They also argue that defending international liberalism has never been more important: does an era of escalating geopolitical crises help or hinder the Liberal Democrat message?
Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm James Heel. I'm joined today by Al Pinkerton, |
| 0:09.7 | who's the Liberal Democrat MP for Surrey Heath, and Mark Pack, the Liberal Democrat Peer and |
| 0:13.9 | longtime blogger. Now, we're discussing today as part of our ongoing series into different political |
| 0:17.9 | parties and elements of the election strategy looking at the Lib Dems. Mark, I'll come to you, first of all. It seems in some ways it's sort of a rerun of 12 |
| 0:26.2 | months ago. Obviously, Lib Dems have done a lot of campaigning against President Trump and reform. |
| 0:31.9 | And obviously, they had a very good set of election results last year, winning all sorts of |
| 0:36.3 | places across the South, coming second as well in places |
| 0:38.8 | like County Durham. I just wonder, so 12 months on, how has the playbook changed, whether that be |
| 0:43.1 | in terms of leafleting or issues that you're focusing on? I think it's actually changed remarkably little, |
| 0:48.0 | because we talk a lot about how volatile politics is, but in many ways the landscape for these |
| 0:53.5 | local elections is very similar to last |
| 0:55.6 | year, that although they are primarily about councils and potholes and schools and the like, |
| 1:01.5 | international issues definitely are on people's minds, and Donald Trump is, for whatever we think |
| 1:06.8 | of him, and you can guess my views. You know, he is a massively dominant figure looming over |
| 1:12.0 | the whole world. But also politically, I think that, you know, we're very much in a world where |
| 1:17.7 | the amount of campaigning people put in in different places really makes a difference to the results |
| 1:22.4 | and looking at things like national share of the vote or uniform swing doesn't get you that |
| 1:27.0 | far in terms of understanding |
| 1:28.4 | what's going on. And hence, I think last year we took, it's probably fair to say, a fair few journalists |
| 1:33.6 | by surprise by the fact that we beat both Labour and the Tories. We did better than only of them |
| 1:38.1 | in the local elections last time because you weren't seeing that in the national polls and the swings. |
| 1:42.8 | And so I'm pretty confident we'll have another very good set of results this time. And we might not do it this year, but we're certainly on track to overtake the conservatives to the number of councillors. We already run more councils than them. And I think, you know, overtaking them with a number of councillors would be quite a seismic change in the basic infrastructure, if I can put it like that, at British |
... |
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