Mark Pack’s latest report back to party members from Federal Elections and Communications Committee (FCEC)

Perhaps the most pointless question PMs are asked

No, he isn’t going to tell you his election plans. Photograph Crown Copyright and used under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Liberal Democrat members were sent one of our long explainer emails last week, this one from me explaining the party’s thinking on the chances of an early general election, and in particular the chances of one before Christmas. (If you are a member and didn’t receive the email, drop a line to help@libdems.org.uk so the team can check your email address and opt in/out status.)

As ever, it’s both useful and interesting to see people’s responses; thank you! The resulting discussions have highlighted three further points beyond those in the email.

First, Labour polled 35% in Great Britain at the last general election, the one where they won a huge landslide. (I use the GB figure as that’s the one that most opinion polls mirror.) So seeing several recent polls putting Labour on or above 30% means they are closing in on what was landslide territory. That may seem an obvious bit of counting but I think it is easy to overlook, at least if you have been around in politics for a while, as we used to have an instinct that 30% for Labour or the Conservatives is a horribly low poll rating. Not so in the politics of these times.

Second, ‘are you going to call an early election?’ is perhaps the most useless question that Prime Ministers get asked. Whether they are going to, aren’t going to, haven’t made up their mind or haven’t started thinking about it, they all give the same answer - ‘no’. Even when they are working up to doing so, the answer is ‘no’ until the moment it is ‘yes’.

There is no predictive value, no insight, no information to be gleaned from the answers to this question. (Which may make you sympathise with political journalists trapped in a world where they feel they have to ask such questions, or make you despair that they don’t do more to try to escape that world.)

Third, information can sometimes be gleaned from whether or not the governing party is getting itself ready. True, this isn’t a sure sign. Remember 2024 when the Conservative PM caught most of his own party organisation by surprise? Remarkably, in many of the key Lib Dem/Conservative battles, it was the Lib Dem campaign that was better prepared and got going sooner. And back in 2007, the Labour Party were making preparations - but then Gordon Brown changed his mind and the plans were cancelled.

But it would be foolish to ignore completely whether the governing party is preparing. So we should be aware of things such as this:

Last week a Lib Dem councillor told HQ that he had tried to order some new Correx boards – the plastic placards used in election campaigns – only to be told the company could not fulfil the order for another month because it would be using all of November to complete a large order for the Labour Party. [The i]

And we should be aware of how many difficult decisions the 10 Downing Street operation is putting off until the second half of next year and beyond, opening up a gap between now and the really tough stuff hitting. As The Economist’s political editor put it a few days ago, “An early election is the only way the current strategy makes sense.”

None of this adds up to a sure thing, of course. It is, however, a good reason to be prepared - particularly because if we don’t have a snap election in the immediate future, there is still the gap in the first half of next year. Even then if there is no early election, getting prepared, getting some practice in and getting focused on what is needed - those are all useful, whenever the election comes.

Discussing the party’s plan for all this was a major part of the most recent meeting of our Federal Communications and Elections Committee (FCEC), which I chair. We also discussed with James Holt, the party’s new Political Director, his plans for developing our message and communications, as well as the new work being done to refine our national campaigns, the successors to sewage in the last Parliament (though I suspect sewage may end up featuring again!).

With the summer by-election in Clacton behind us, we reviewed our rules for how to handle such situations in the light of that experience, and also agreed to co-opt Kamran Hussain to FCEC and to take over my previous role as our representative on Federal Conference Committee (FCC).