Background
After the successful 2022 local elections in Scotland where we went from 67 councillors in 2017 to 87 councillors in 2022, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton set an ambitious target – to aim for over 150 councillors in 2027.
Our strategy – 150 Rising – aims to get our Council representation in Scotland to a level similar to our pre-coalition peak. While 2022 was our best local election in 15 years, we know we can do much more, and one year on into the current Scottish Council term, progress is being made.
So what is going on?
Since we unveiled the strategy at the 2022 Autumn Conference, a huge amount of work has been done by staff, volunteers and elected representatives. ALDC has been playing a key role in helping to deliver this working with the Scottish Liberal Democrat Campaigns Team.
We have seen a big uptick in deliveries. Some of this has been the creation of Scottish Party surveys that have been given to teams along with Freepost return envelopes. We have seen many returned, helping identify the issues, voting intentions and a number of volunteers.
There has also been membership recruitment leaflets that have recently been sent out to teams, and we have started to see a small increase in membership numbers in Scotland in recent weeks.
There has also been great use of funding. Some of this has helped in Council by-elections, and it has been used to great effect in both Aberdeen and Stirling recently to help them put wards in a great position to win in 2027.
There has been some funding for Facebook Adverts for petitions and surveys in target wards, helping to build a better data picture.
The Scottish Party has also been helping to part fund leaflets for candidates in key target wards – and in the most recent round of funding it was great to see a lot of new candidates benefiting for this in wards we hope to gain next time.
And this is the most exciting thing – at this point in the last electoral cycle, there were very few people at all thinking about running for Council. We have even had some big 150 Rising Action Days including this May where teams from the Highlands to the Scottish Borders were out in force.
The team also hope to be delivering a training programme across Scotland soon to help teams build the skills they need to win!
Future Progress
It has been an encouraging start to this strategy, but we know much more needs to be done to win in 2027. More doors need knocking, and more leaflets need delivering. However we know starting early is much more likely to deliver success, so we will continue to work with the teams locally to win!