If Enfield Liberal Democrats can fill a French restaurant in Palmers Green for their annual dinner, how come they can’t win a single council seat? That was the core message — though not in quite such blunt terms — from this evening’s after-dinner speaker, Lynne Featherstone, MP for nearby Hornsey and Wood Green. Of course, Enfield is not alone among the LibDems’ ‘nuls points’ London boroughs to nonetheless put on brilliant and enjoyable social events — and in some cases, even to have quite sizable memberships — yet not manage to make a political breakthrough in recent times. The key to success, Lynne argued from her own experience in Haringey, is to target one ward, as she and her colleagues did in Muswell Hill, then move forward step by step. In Haringey’s case this has meant that the party has come from nowhere to being in spitting distance of taking control of the council next year, having already catapulted Lynne into Parliament in 2005.
How many of the local parties in the LibDems’ London black holes can seize this challenge and run with it? Kensington and Chelsea is having a good crack at it with the current council by-election campaign in Colville ward. And one of the secondary aims of the European election campaign in London earlier this month was to enable the weaker local parties to build up target wards. Breakthroughs in 2010 would not just be a cause of celebration for Liberal Democrats in the boroughs concerned. They would also strengthen the chances of the party in city-wide elections that are carried out under proportional representation. That should mean a rise in 2012 from the current three list members on the GLA and, with sufficient effort, seizing in 2014 the so-far elusive second London LibDem Euro-seat.
