The quiet revolution in the way Lib Dem HQ does campaigning

Amongst the list of reasons for the dramatic Liberal Democrat victory in Richmond Park is the party's earlier lively and successful by-election campaign in Witney. That contest was not won but the big swing to the party and the strong second place generated significant political momentum, media credibility and activist motivation all of which were extremely useful just weeks later in winning Richmond Park.

Which makes the decision to fight that vigorous campaign in Witney seem the obvious one to have taken. But it was in fact a radical departure from the party's approach for quite a few years now to such by-elections, with many key decision makers in the party over those years giving the impression that minimising the net financial cost or 'distraction' from held seats was all that mattered. The result? A series of dismal results which reinforced the wider media message about the party being down in the dumps and which gave party members even more to be downbeat about.

So the switch in approach for Witney was not only logical but also part of a major - and sensible - shift in the party's campaigning strategy. As I argued in How to rebuild the Liberal Democrats, the party needs to take each election seriously in its own way. Each election is a change to add momentum, increase morale, test new tactics and build a larger core vote for the party.

Standing aside and letting the brave volunteer candidate be walloped (or worse, still, have no candidate) is not smart economisation of resources. It is a failure to understand that the battle for attention, morale and momentum needs continuous fighting.

But there's more change to party campaigning going on that just this stepping up to the battle. There's a second welcome shift - to seeing campaigning as being more than electioneering. That is, that campaigning includes running campaigns just as a pressure group would - finding an objective that would change the world in the direction we want and then mobilising grassroots support to help secure it. Hence the recruitment of a new Head of Campaigns post at HQ with a job description focused just on this.

As I wrote when the post was announced, we see a little of this broader approach to campaigning already with Liberal Democrat participation in events such as Pride. But it's only a taster of what could be achieved:

1. Running campaigns to change the world is part of the wider purpose of the Liberal Democrats, as captured in Community Politics. Elections are a vital part of that but not the only part.
2. Running campaigns broader than simply 'please vote for us' is also a powerful way to communicate our values, and to build that larger Liberal Democrat core vote.
3. Running campaigns which have successes outside of polling days provides an important boost to membership recruitment, morale and fundraising. You can be winning and building without a polling day near.
4. Running campaigns builds bridges to other organisations, attracts new people, garners attentions and generates data - all of which directly helps election campaigns too.

Added together these two shifts make for a very different approach to campaigning than the Liberal Democrats have practised for a long time.