Liberal Democrats (UK)
The Liberal Democrats, colloquially known as the Lib Dems, is a political party in the United Kingdom. Ideologically adhering to liberalism, it was founded in 1988. The party is based at Liberal Democrat Headquarters, which since September 2025 has been based at Buckingham Gate, in the Westminster area of Central London. The party's leader is Ed Davey. It is the third-largest party in the United Kingdom, with 72 members of Parliament in the House of Commons. It has members of the House of Lords, 5 in the Scottish Parliament, 1 in the Welsh Senedd, and around 3,200 local council seats. The party holds a twice yearly Liberal Democrat Conference, at which policy is formulated. In contrast to its main opponents, the Lib Dems grant all members attending Conference the right to vote on policy, under a one member, one vote system. As well as voting in the Conference Hall, the party allows its members to vote online for its policies and leadership elections. Members are also free to join organisations representing strands of party thinking, such as Liberal Reform and Social Liberal Forum, and for those under 30 years, Young Liberals.
In 1981, an electoral alliance was established between the Liberal Party, a group which descended from the 18th-century Whigs, and the Social Democratic Party, a splinter group from the Labour Party. In 1988, the parties merged as the Social and Liberal Democrats, adopting their present name a year later. Under the leaderships of Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy, the party grew in the 1990s and 2000s, focusing its campaigns on specific seats and retained the third-largest party status in the House of Commons, although with significantly more seats than the predecessor Liberal Party. In the 1997 election, the Liberal Democrats doubled their seat count to 46. In 2010, under Nick Clegg's leadership, the Lib Dems were junior partners in the Conservative-led coalition government, in which Clegg served as deputy prime minister. Though it allowed the party to implement some of its policies, the coalition damaged its electoral standing; it lost 48 of its 56 MPs at the 2015 general election, which relegated it to fourth-largest party in the House of Commons. Under the leaderships of Tim Farron, Vince Cable and Jo Swinson, the party refocused as a pro-Europeanist party opposing Brexit. In the 2019 general election, the party garnered 11.5% of the vote on an anti-Brexit platform, but this did not translate into seat gains. However, the party's success was renewed under the leadership of Ed Davey, winning hundreds of councillors and 72 MPs in the 2024 general election, its highest result since 1923, and resuming its status as the third largest party in the House of Commons.
A centrist to centre-left party, the Lib Dems ideologically draw upon liberalism and social democracy. Different factions have dominated the party at different times, each with its own ideological bent. Some factions leaned towards the centre-left, while others were in the centre. The party is a member of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party, and Liberal International. It calls for constitutional reform, including a change from first-past-the-post voting to proportional representation. Emphasising stronger protections for civil liberties, the party promotes social-liberal approaches to issues like LGBT rights, drug liberalisation, education and criminal justice. It favours a market-based economy supplemented with social welfare spending. The party has been described as progressive, and is internationalist and pro-European, and supported the People's Vote for UK membership of the European Union and greater European integration, having previously called for adoption of the euro. The Lib Dems have promoted further environmental protections and opposed British military ventures such as the Iraq War.
The Lib Dems have historically been strongest in northern Scotland, south-west London, South West England, and mid Wales. Membership is primarily made up of middle-class professionals and has a higher proportion of university-educated members than other UK parties. The party is a federation of the English, Scottish, and Welsh Liberal Democrats, and is in a partnership with the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, while still organising there.
History
Origins (1977–1983)
The Liberal Party had existed in different forms for over 300 years. During the 19th and early 20th century, it had been one of the United Kingdom's two dominant political parties, along with the Conservative Party. Following World War I, it was pushed into third place by the Labour Party and underwent a gradual decline throughout the rest of the 20th century. In the 1970s, the Liberal leader David Steel began contemplating how an alliance with other parties could return it to political power. In 1977, he formed a pact with Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan to back Callaghan's government in a motion of no confidence. This angered many Liberals and damaged them electorally. In the 1979 general election, the Liberals lost three seats in the House of Commons; the Conservatives, led by Margaret Thatcher, won the election.Within the Labour Party, many centrists were uncomfortable with the growing influence of the hard left, who were calling for the UK to leave the European Economic Community and unilaterally disarm as a nuclear power. In January 1981, four senior Labour MPs—Bill Rodgers, Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins, and David Owen, known as the "Gang of Four"—issued the Limehouse Declaration in which they announced their split from Labour. This led to the formal launch of the Social Democratic Party in March. One of its first decisions was to negotiate an electoral arrangement with the Liberals, facilitated between Jenkins, who was the first SDP leader, and Steel.
The new alliance initially did well in opinion polls. The SDP and Liberals agreed to contest alternating parliamentary by-elections; between 1981 and 1982, the SDP came close in Warrington and won Crosby and Glasgow Hillhead. At the 1983 general election, the Liberals gained five additional seats although the SDP lost many that they had previously inherited from Labour. After the 1983 election, Owen replaced Jenkins as head of the SDP. Several gains were made in subsequent by-elections: the SDP won in Portsmouth South and Greenwich and the Liberals in Brecon and Radnor and Ryedale.
Foundation and early years (1987–1992)
Both parties lost seats in the 1987 general election. In the wake of this, Steel called for the SDP and Liberals to merge into a single party. At the grassroots, various local constituency groups had already de facto merged. In the SDP, Jenkins, Rodgers, Williams, and the MP Charles Kennedy supported the idea; Owen and the MPs Rosie Barnes and John Cartwright opposed it. The SDP's membership was balloted on the idea: after it produced 57.4% in favour of the merger, Owen resigned as leader, to be replaced by Bob Maclennan. A Liberal conference in September found delegates providing a landslide majority for the merger. Formal negotiations launched that month and in December it produced a draft constitution for the new party. In 1988, Liberal and SDP meetings both produced majorities for the merger; finally, the memberships of both parties were balloted and both produced support for unification. Those in both parties opposed to unification split to form their own breakaway groups, in the form of the Liberal Party and the Continuing SDP.The Social and Liberal Democrats were formally launched on 3 March 1988. Steel and Maclennan initially became joint interim leaders. At the start, it claimed 19 MPs, 3,500 local councillors, and 100,000 members. In its first leadership election, Paddy Ashdown defeated Alan Beith. Ashdown saw the Liberal Democrats as a radical, reforming force, putting forward policies for introducing home rule for Scotland and Wales, proportional representation, transforming the House of Lords into an elected Senate, and advancing environmental protections. At the September 1988 conference it adopted the short form name "the Democrats" and in October 1989 changed its name to "Liberal Democrats". The bird of liberty was adopted as its logo. In 1989, its election results were poor: it lost 190 seats in the May 1989 local elections and secured only 6.4% of the vote in the 1989 European Parliament elections, beaten to third position by the Green Party. This was the worst election result for an established third party since the 1950s. Its prospects were buoyed after it won the 1990 Eastbourne by-election, followed by-election victories in Ribble Valley and Kincardine and Deeside. In the 1991 local elections it secured a net gain of 520 seats. In the 1992 general election, it secured 17.8% of the vote and 20 seats in the House of Commons: nine of these were in Scotland and five were in Southwest England.
Consolidation and growth (1992–1999)
Between 1992 and 1997, the party underwent a period of consolidation, particularly on local councils. In the 1994 local elections, it came second, pushing the Conservatives into third place. In the 1994 European Parliament elections, it gained two Members of the European Parliament. In 1993, the party was damaged by allegations of racism on the Liberal Democrat-controlled council in Tower Hamlets; it faced additional problems as its distinctive centrist niche was threatened by the rise of Tony Blair and New Labour, a project which pushed Labour to the centre. At the 1997 general election, it fielded 639 candidates, securing 46 MPs, the greatest number that the Liberals had had since 1929. These were concentrated in Southwest England, Southwest London, and areas of Scotland. However, the Liberal Democrats attained only 5.2 million votes versus 6 million in 1992.Although Blair's Labour won a landslide victory in 1997 and did not require a coalition government, Blair was interested in cooperation with the Lib Dems. In July 1997, he invited Ashdown and other senior Lib Dems to join a Cabinet Committee on constitutional affairs. Privately, Blair offered the Liberal Democrats a coalition but later backed down amid fears that it would split his own Cabinet. The joint Committee launched the Independent Commission on the Voting System in December; its report, published in October 1998, proposed the change from the first past the post electoral system to an alternative vote top-up system. This was not the Lib Dems' preferred option—they wanted full proportional representation—although Ashdown hailed it as "a historic step forward". Many Lib Dems were concerned by Ashdown's growing closeness with Labour; aware of this, he stepped down as party leader in 1999. Before he did so, the party took part in the 1999 elections for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. In both, the Lib Dems came fourth and became Labour's junior coalition partners.