Luke Cawley-Harrison on Lib Dem General Election hopes

Fresh from reclaiming third place in the London Mayoral election, our best result since 2008, and winning more councillors across the country than the Conservatives for only the second time ever, the Liberal Democrats start the General Election campaign on the up.

The London Assembly elections were held under a proportional system, meaning anyone living anywhere in the capital could vote for who they like: Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem, Green, Reform or an even smaller party.

Anyone who breaches the 5% threshold can win a seat on the London Assembly and voters don’t need to worry about ‘wasting’ their vote.

Sadly, at the General Election this won’t be the case.

Lib Dems have long argued for the introduction of a proportional system, but both Labour and the Conservatives continue to back the current system, which awards far more seats to those two parties than they ‘deserve’ from their vote share.

Luke Cawley-Harrison says that the General Election is not just a battle between the Labour and Conservative Parties (Image: D Tothill2018)

This system means that the election is fought out constituency by constituency, with different battles in every seat.

While the media will largely focus on the fight between Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak, the reality is that a huge number of seats will see a different contest to a Labour vs Tory head-to-head.

There are large numbers of constituencies where only the Lib Dems can beat the Conservatives, plus quite a few where it is Lib Dem vs Labour, and even a couple where it will be Labour vs Green.

Here in Haringey, in the new seats of Hornsey & Friern Barnet and Hampstead & Highgate, the parties really contesting will be the Lib Dems and Labour, with the Conservatives and Greens back in third and fourth.

The brutal truth is that votes here in Haringey, as in a lot of London, won’t decide whether Labour or the Conservatives win the election.

But with both Hornsey & Friern Barnet and Hampstead & Highgate as Lib Dem vs Labour battlegrounds, it does mean voters can freely vote for a local Lib Dem MP who will stand up for our area and push innovative solutions to fix social care, invest in the green transition, focus on building the economy, tackle the broken water system to end the scandal of sewage in our waterways, fight for rejoining the single market and deliver political reform through proportional representation.

• Luke Cawley-Harrison is councillor of Crouch End ward, Haringey Council and leader of the Liberal Democrat Group.