Chair’s Report - Liberal Democrats Overseas
Annual General Meeting: 24^th November 2024

Welcome to the Lib Dems Overseas AGM for 2024.

This year will be remembered by us as never before.

Major wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and The Sudan, weather disasters because of climate change and the continued slow erosion of liberal democracy through a series of elections around the world, these events made the headlines this year. And all trumped by Trump winning the US Presidential election at the end of the year. 

However, in the UK, the story was quite different. The UK’s distorted electoral system saw the Labour party win almost two thirds of parliamentary seats with just a third of the vote share.  The winds of change led to the Lib Dems bagging 72 seats, about the right proportion despite the electoral system - the best result in a century! 

This great Lib Dem result can be put down to maybe three main factors: the awful record and ineptitude of the Conservative Party; a clever PR campaign run by Ed Davey, our party leader that got us back in the media; and - as Lib Dems’ Chief Executive Mike Dixon would put it - a relentless laser-focus on target seats that the party believed could most easily be won. 

The strategy worked beyond all expectations. The Lib Dems gained almost two and a half times the 30 seats that they were trying to get. 

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It was a special year as well for British citizens abroad whom we support and represent within the party. On 16^th January 2024, an estimated 2.1 million additional British citizens abroad received the right to vote. That made approximately 3.5 million citizens abroad eligible to vote at the 2024 General Election: almost the size of Scotland’s electorate, if only the overseas vote could reach its full potential.

Lib Dems Overseas, Lib Dems in Europe and Lib Dems in France local parties coordinated their campaigns for the first time under the umbrella of Lib Dem Abroad. A campaign committee was formed which included Yolly and myself from Lib Dems Overseas. We had a two-pronged approach: pushing first for overseas voter registration; and then the “Vote Lib Dem” message. 

The campaign consisted of:

• Almost daily creative social media posts which were amplified by many of our Lib Dem Overseas members and others through our own social media channels.
• An Ed Davey video appeal to overseas voters.
• A video giving five reasons why overseas voters should vote Lib Dem, where Lib Dem Overseas members appeared.
• A press campaign, giving us visibility for the first time in the media. Letters to the Editor were published in The Guardian and Weekend Financial Times. Articles were authored by us in the New European and EU Reporter. There were also numerous mentions of our work in other articles, including in the Gulf.
• A website www.britsabroad.vote launched to encourage overseas voter registration.
• Two contact databases built, one containing hundreds of British overseas associations, the other for key journalists/international media outlets.
• Engagement with our members and supporters, including three of our Parliamentary candidates addressing an online Lib Dems Abroad general election event.
• Donations by Lib Dems Abroad local parties to eight target seats. Lib Dems Overseas donated to Lib Dem candidates in North-East Fife and Wimbledon.
• Phone canvassing of target seats, when time zones permitted.

Three former Lib Dems Abroad members – David Chadwick, Victoria Collins and Freddy van Mierlo were elected Members of Parliament.

This was frankly a huge effort that fully absorbed our abroad activists during the first half of the year. Campaigning abroad was also very new to the party and not many resources were made available to help us.

In October, Lib Dems Abroad completed its internal assessment of the party’s first-ever comprehensive overseas voter general election campaign and submitted its experiences to the party’s 2024 General Election review.

The Electoral Commission recently published its report on the general election campaign. It showed that there were a disappointing 191,000 overseas voter registrations for the 2024 general election compared to 234,000 in 2019. This was a reduction of 22% in voter registration, despite a two and a half times increase in the overseas voter franchise. 

For those who did vote by post, only half of the ballots arrived back in the UK in time to be counted because of the short period of time between mailing out and return of balliots hampered further by the unreliability of the various postal services. Much work needs to be done to improve overseas voter awareness of their rights, to encourage voter registration, and to ensure ways are found for ballots reach the count in the UK on time.

Lib Dems Overseas rapidly tackled this challenge at the party’s autumn conference, held soon after the general election. Conference passed our amendment to the “Fair Votes for All” motion which called for an adequate budget for the Electoral Commission to continue promoting overseas registration; secure electronic delivery of ballot papers; voting at British Embassies, Consulates and High Commissions; and the promotion of proxy voting (the original motion already covered overseas constituencies). My thanks to Yolly for having drafted the motion and for Caroline Voaden MP who joined me at the podium and summated it.

Next on our conference agenda must be unfreezing overseas state pensions. This needs to be made party policy so we can fight on that platform as a manifesto commitment in the next general election for the sake of the ½ million pensioners who are impacted by the current status quo! 

We also participated at the Lib Dem autumn conference in the general election review consultative session and at a fringe meeting with the Electoral Commission. We had a stand in the exhibition hall at both spring and autumn conferences.

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Later in the year, in October, Lib Dems Abroad members turned out in force at the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) Congress in Estoril, Portugal. A third of all Lib Dem delegates at the event came from Lib Dems Abroad local parties. They formed a powerful voting block for the party at a time much of ALDE’s leadership was being elected. Friends, I am coming to the end of my three years of mandate as Lib Dems Abroad Steering Committee Chair as well as four years as Chair of our wonderful local party, Lib Dems Overseas. 

I have really enjoyed us working together since Lib Dems Overseas was formed in 2018. It is really a pleasure to have been with you.

My special thanks for this year go to Yolly who accompanied and advised me wisely at Lib Dems Abroad meetings. To Michael and Terry who are building back our membership. To Caroline and Terry for their work on the British associations database. To John and Nick for years of being steady pairs of hands as secretary and treasurer. To Colin for his relentless fight to unfreeze overseas pensions. To Christopher in Hong Kong. Tori in the USA, Vince on St Helena - and Merlene as Returning Officer today. And to everybody else, including Hauwa who is always around to cheer us up!

Thank you very much!

George Cunningham, Chair