As a member in the south-west of England I am acutely aware of how we have fallen behind in the rural areas of England where we used to be able to garner a large amount of support. The south-west has a quite rare mixture of very rural communities and a long liberal tradition. In fact, my own constituency of Tiverton and Honiton (now a deep blue Tory area) was once partly represented by Lord Palmerston who was the MP for Tiverton while Prime Minister. Given the past support in the south-west I think it would be very worthwhile to now consider how we can win back such areas across the country in the long term.

The south-west voted slightly more in favour of Brexit than the rest of the country and some of our former seats were even more in favour of Brexit than the rest of the region. For example, North Devon voted 57% in favour of leaving the EU. As a result, our Brexit policy is likely to be less attractive in this area, so it would be worthwhile to look to our other policies to win back support. There are a few policy areas where we are leading the way already which would be very impactful and confront some of the main issues facing the region. The main issues as I see them are a feeling of a lack of political representation by Westminster, lack of investment in transport infrastructure and a very stretched healthcare system.

The party’s longstanding support for localism and further devolution should help us to reverse the feeling of political disenchantment in the region and should serve us in good stead to reverse our losses in the south-west. Given the large spaces between communities empowering the individuals living there to have a larger say in the running of their communities is even more important. This is because those communities are often very isolated, so they do not get as much attention from the stretched local councils. Further devolution of powers for local councils and hopefully further funds will also allow us to devise a better local transport strategy to improve rail and bus services. These transport links are vitally important for people of all ages as being unable to easily get around their local area will drive loneliness and isolation.

Our policy on raising income tax to fund the NHS going forward will help to improve the healthcare provision across the country, especially in rural areas where the resources are already very stretched. Once again, more powers for local communities will help to develop a more nuanced, locally focussed approach to healthcare, rather than applying similar policies across the board without much focus on the area in question.

Given the impending end of the Brexit process now is the time to start thinking about how we, as a party, can develop policies beyond our opposition to Brexit to win back our former voters who we have lost since the coalition.

* Luke Jeffrey is Vice-Chair of Devon and Cornwall Young Liberals and the Youth Development Officer for Tiverton and Honiton Liberal Democrats.