Editor’s Note: This article previously made reference to the alleged actions of an unidentified member of party staff. This reference has been removed on the request of that member of staff. Lib Dem Voice has apologised for its original inclusion – we have always sought to avoid such references on the site but our small team of volunteer editors overlooked it on this occasion

My fellow colleague kicked off a fascinating debate on how the Party might progress on Sunday. Amongst the comments was a contribution from Michael Meadowcroft which, according to one of our readers, deserved to be expanded upon. It’s a bit longer than our normal pieces, but I hope that it will be thought-provoking. Mark

I have a fellow feeling for Paul Holmes as another of the handful of Liberals who have gained seats from Labour, but it is perverse in his situation for him to defend targeting. I have acknowledged that it arguably works once in the ruthless way it has been carried out for twenty-five years with the diminishing and lethal returns we saw last year. It is a risk to execute targeting even once but the result in 1997 arguably justified its inception. It is the continuance of the strategy that has been disastrous. Indeed the evidence of its failure is visible in that the same seats have to be targeted election after election because we have been unable to build self-supporting organisations in those seats. How then can we rely only on this strategy to win a wide swathe of seats towards a majority in the House of Commons?

By definition, once we have no campaigning in a majority of seats our organisation atrophies and we lose the deliverers, canvassers and all the local workers in those seats. Then, at the following election, the number of workers available to go to target seats dwindles away and the strategy doesn’t even work for target seats. Today, in the eight constituencies making up the City of Leeds, there is no Liberal Democrat activity at all in seven of them – including my old constituency – except for a few outlying wards in which we have a single councillor left or a recent City Council presence. My efforts to revive West Leeds were opposed and wrecked.

Nor did Paul Holmes success in Chesterfield stem from targeting; it was the consequence of the by-election there in 1984 when the Liberal vote leapt from 19.5% to 35%. This was followed up by Tony Rogers who, over thirteen years, pushed the vote up to 40%. Chesterfield could have been won on its own merits, without targeting, as long as the party’s national standing was high enough. What is more, targeting could not save Chesterfield in 2010 – even before the electoral effect of the coalition! The scale of the failure of targeting is best seen in Wales where, for the first time ever, there is no Liberal MP!

Paul gives the game away by mentioning “Cleggmania” in 2010. The party had already ceased to be a viable national party so that, by 2010, when our national poll rating leapt by 10% after the first leaders’ debate, we were incapable of capitalising on it in more than a few seats. That surge just dissipated because of our lack of organisation across the country. The same is the case now with the post-referendum increase in members. The party is not in any position to draw them in and to energise them into a powerful political party.

There are two other important points in relation to target seats themselves. In Leeds North West there was an increase of 16% in the electorate in the last few days. It is said that many were students. Inevitably most will have come to Leeds from constituencies where we had no presence and, therefore, they had no background in voting Liberal Democrat. They voted Labour and Greg Mulholland was doomed. The same effect was probably the case in Sheffield Hallam. By contrast, we did well in the five contiguous seats in South West London where Liberal Democrat activity in the whole area created a broader awareness of the party’s presence and its wider appeal.

I am not arguing against there being “special” seats to which “spare” activity is directed. This is what happened in West Leeds prior to victory in 1983, but we always urged colleagues to be active in all the constituencies around us. First, this tied up more of the other parties’ activity and, second, it gave us a much greater presence in the local media, which helped us. But many Liberals wanted to help ensure victory by giving us their extra time – and it worked.

Finally, targeting, as currently practised, is a fraud on the electors and sheer hypocrisy. The party puts candidates willy-nilly into seats without them having any connection with the area and knowing there will be no campaigning there. Then it proclaims the party is fighting (almost) every seat and it publishes the list of candidates. No approach to such a candidate from media or even a voter will get a worthwhile response. It is a complete pretence and we ought to be ashamed of it. Liberalism deserves better.

Can I turn briefly to Lorenzo Cherin and Katherine Pindar who queried my emphasis on “values before policy” in today’s political circumstances. It may well be more difficult today but the besetting sin of the party in modern times is the reliance on hyper activity and millions of Focus leaflets, neither of which will serve to build a self-supporting political party. We are always trying to go directly for votes rather than finding those of a Liberal attitude who, if recruited and imbued with the values, will be committed enough to go out and win the voters at large. Politics is of necessity a two stage operation and it is impossible to baptise the electorate with a hose pipe! There are – palpably few maybe – instinctive Liberals in every area. Our task is to direct our appeal to them, via more serious material which sets out what a Liberal society is like and enables them to identify with being a Liberal. Then with even a small but committed team, it is possible to build towars an election campaign.

It is salutary to connect with Paul Holmes reference to the meeting we were both at recently in Mid-Derbyshire. I was contacted by a member in that constituency. He told me that he had joined the party at the time of the referendum but he did not know what he had joined! He had been told that I might come to a meeting in Mid-Derbyshire to set out what the party was and what its history and values were. Of course, I was happy to do so. There were some thirty people present and we had a long and intense meeting and a constructive discussion. I gathered afterwards that the meeting was thought to be a success and helped to demonstrate why the new members should continue to be involved.

We need to have similar meetings constituency by constituency but not waiting for invitations but rather saying that we want to come – however few people might be present – and just give us possible dates. Revival is possible but not overnight.

* Michael Meadowcroft has been campaigning for Liberalism for sixty-two years! He has served in just about every capacity in the party and in elected offices, including MP for Leeds West, 1983-87. He then spent twenty years working in new and emerging democracies across the world