OPINION - Lib Dem's Patrick Stillman: Our voters aren't just those that can afford Gail's

I’ve long taken exception to the idea that there are “Lib Dem areas” (notably those with a Gail’s Bakery) or “Lib Dem voters” (those that can afford Gail’s).

If my experience in Camden has shown me anything, it’s that the most unexpected doors are the ones with support hiding behind them. You just have to knock.

Some will pour their heart out on the door step about how their now-adult-kids, who have by all accounts done everything right, find themselves unable to get so much as an interview for a job they’ve spent their whole young adult life preparing for.

Patrick Stillman, the Liberal Democrat candidate

Some will invite you in and show you the damp, the mould, the visible signs of neglect from their landlord, Camden Council. Their complaint, and any request for repairs, has been lost in the depths of a database, and any follow-up with the engineer who was supposed to be back last week (or the week before) clearly forgotten – or worse, ignored. Email after email, too much to keep track of and no replies from the council anyway.

With Holborn & St Pancras, we could have very easily not shown up.

In the 2024 General Election, the then Prime Minister took nearly 50% of the vote. The Liberal Democrats? 6th place, 5.8%. So,why are we bothering? Because we’re bothered. Our Council Group, currently representing wards the North of the Borough, already does fantastic work standing up for residents.

But there are issues across Camden that we can’t solve without talking to people across the area, without learning about them, without championing the things that residents care about.

For our team, it's simply not good enough that there are people in Camden in poverty, people in our Borough who live in insecure or unsafe housing, or whose kids can’t find work or whose parents are scared of losing theirs.

As a party the Lib Dems have pushed the debate so far on Europe, on social care reform, on proportional representation, that the Prime Minister practically read out our manifesto on stage on Tuesday last week.

The Greens - who have less MPs in Parliament than we have in London - like to claim they’re the ones that have forced the government's hand on the big issues, but the fact remains that it is the Liberal Democrats who’ve set the national agenda for the next three years. And whilst Burnham spends that time working out how to do the things we would have started over two years ago, we’re continuing to look out for the issues of tomorrow.

For me, that is liberalism. We are a party that looks to the future. Unafraid of change, unafraid of showing up. Unafraid that behind that door might be someone whose trust in politics is so broken that the very idea that you could restore it is scoffed at as something truly futile. As futile, perhaps, as running a campaign in Holborn and St Pancras.

Politics is only futile if we decide it is. When we assume we know what the answer behind the door will be. When we treat politics as electoral territory that already belongs to someone else. And for myself and the Camden Liberal Democrats, that’s simply never going to be an option.

::Patrick Stillman is the Liberal Democrat candidate in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election on Thursday, October 8.