Roz Savage was elected as the Liberal Democrat MP for South Cotswolds in 2024 (Credit: Andrew Matthews/PA Images/Alamy)
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A Liberal Democrat MP has warned her party is “struggling for relevance” and failing to paint a “coherent picture of the country we are trying to create”.
In a new essay shared exclusively with PoliticsHome, South Cotswolds MP Roz Savage argued that liberals must “rediscover” their “insurgent spirit”, rather than being “the polite custodians of a system that leaves people feeling powerless”.
The essay, Liberalism Alive, has been published just days before the Lib Dem conference in Brighton this weekend, where members will debate a new strategy document aimed at expanding the party’s support in a fractured political landscape.
While Savage does not directly name party leader Ed Davey or call for a change of leadership, her warning comes as pressure has grown on Davey to articulate a more distinct political offer to voters.
A Lib Dem spokesperson insisted the party is a “serious national force” which is “fighting to change politics so that we can change our country”.
In a recent sit-down interview with The House magazine, Davey said local election results showed that the party was “expanding” across the country under his leadership and in “its strongest position in over a century”. He also defended his use of stunts, saying: “I don’t think we’d have as many MPs, frankly, as we do if we hadn’t done the visuals that we did last election.”
In her essay, published by the progressive think tank Compass, Savage said liberalism should not be pitched to voters as “a comfortable midpoint between left and right” and that her party should avoid being seen as “nicer technocrats with slightly better policies”.
Instead, she argued, liberals should seek to answer more fundamental questions about how to create a society in which people can “flourish”.
The MP wrote: “If liberalism’s historic mission is to challenge concentrations of power and expand people’s practical freedom, we also have to ask how well we have lived up to it. Because if liberalism has so much to offer this moment, we have to address the elephant in the room: why are we as a party struggling for relevance at precisely the moment when so many people feel powerless?
“We cannot blame the populists, the media or an electorate that has somehow failed to appreciate our wisdom. We need to take a long hard look at ourselves too.”
According to Savage, the Lib Dems have not successfully woven their policy offering into a compelling narrative for the public.
“Ask people what Britain would look and feel like after ten years of Liberal Democrat government and many would struggle to answer,” she wrote.
“That is not because our individual policies are not good. Many are remarkably popular. The problem is that they do not add up, in the public imagination, to a coherent picture of the country we are trying to create.
“We have sometimes made a virtue of being reasonable, practical and evidence-led. Those are qualities I value, but competence is not a destination.
“Politics also requires imagination: the ability to help people see a different future and believe that it might actually be possible. But that vision also needs coherence. Voters need to know, with crystal clarity, what we stand for and who we stand with.”
The essay sets out Savage’s vision for how liberalism can offer fresh answers to “a country in urgent need of a new direction”.
The MP argued that devolution should form a key component of that new direction, but she said devolution must go “beyond politicians”.
“Moving power from politicians in Westminster to politicians in a town hall is not, by itself, empowering citizens,” she wrote. “It may simply change the postcode of the people making the decisions. Genuine devolution must go further.
“Councils should themselves devolve: to neighbourhoods, parishes, community organisations, schools, cooperatives, community land trusts, and sometimes directly to randomly selected citizens asked to deliberate on particularly difficult questions.”
Savage also warned that AI and the growing influence of the world’s big tech firms could represent the “next concentration of power” away from citizens.
“Technology could liberate enormous amounts of human capacity,” the MP wrote. “It could transform medicine, education and scientific discovery. It could remove drudgery from working life.
“Or it could hand a handful of already powerful corporations unprecedented influence over how the rest of us live, work and think. Left to drift, that is exactly what will happen. That is simply what concentrated power does when nobody chooses otherwise. It is a choice, and perhaps only for a short while longer will it remain ours to make.”
Liberals have struggled, Savage added, in a world where the benefits and costs of globalisation were “distributed unevenly”.
She wrote: “Populists are very good at telling people that their power has been taken away. Where they go wrong is telling them who took it: the migrant, the minority, the civil servant, the judge, the international court, whichever convenient enemy fits the story.
“Liberals need a better answer. We should say: yes, too much power has been taken away from you. But look upwards, not sideways.
“Look at an economy in which wealth and ownership have become increasingly concentrated. Look at monopolies and corporations more powerful than many governments. Look at decisions sucked upwards from communities into Whitehall. Look at political systems in which millions of votes barely affect the outcome. Look at technology companies acquiring unprecedented power over information, work and public discourse.
“The answer is not to find another group with even less power and blame them. It is to redistribute power again.
“That requires liberalism to rediscover its insurgent spirit. We should not be the polite custodians of a system that leaves people feeling powerless.”
A Lib Dem spokesperson told PoliticsHome: “Roz is right that the two old parties have left people feeling powerless after decades of failure and neglect. Everything feels so much harder than it used to be because our country is being held back by a failed political system.
“With record numbers of MPs and more councils led than the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats are a serious national force. At all levels of government, we are fighting to change politics so that we can change our country. Liberal Democrats are leading from the front on the big issues facing people across our country right now – from the cost of living crisis to the barriers holding our world-class businesses back.“
