Apparently, according to Guido Fawkes, the Liberal Democrat Party will no longer be holding a headquarters Christmas party. It is alleged that this is due to cost issues. Lib Dem staff will not be brought into London for the celebrations instead they will have to have local celebrations.

This is in my view extremely short sighted of the Lib Dems. Bringing local party workers to a party in London at Christmas helps to keep happy the local workers who keep the Lib Dem party machine going between elections. That machine needs to be kept running in order to keep the party in the public’s eye between elections.

It is this machine that the Lib Dems have set up so that the Lib Dems are seen as being there outside of elections, that I believe the Lib Dems have got right despite the fact that I would never ever vote for them. I know how important local organisation is with political parties. A party cannot get its message out or find local issues that they could politically exploit of even know the details of an area and its voters without a strong localised branch structure.

Knowing how important good local organisation is it’s therefore important to treat well those who run local party branches or who are in paid positions that would probably earn the worker more outside of the Party than within it. A party needs to keep these people onside and having a nice Christmas Party is one way of doing this. It makes the workers feel better and special being brought to London for a party. It may make them more enthusiastic workers come January when there’s still a mountain of the unglamorous political grunt work to do that makes a party a success or at least not a complete failure.

Doing the Lib Dem workers out of a Christmas Party in London doesn’t look like the way to keep the party’s workers on side.

This decision looks especially odd in the light of an allegation by one of the commenters on the Guido Fawkes post. They are alleging that the Lib Dems held an Eid event for Muslims in the party yet are refusing to properly fund a Christmas Party. If this allegation is true then it all looks a bit like there’s been some two tier goings on in the Lib Dems? It would not surprise me if there were such two tier behaviour going on in a party that I have consistently referred to as ‘Janus faced’.

The Lib Dems cancelling a relatively inexpensive knees up for a few of the key people who keep their party alive out in the sticks look like a false economy to me. It’s likely to negatively affect member and worker morale who are going to have to face the usual round of political organisational drudgery in January without the pleasant and comforting memory of a nice Christmas party.

Link

Guido Fawkes piece about Lib Dem’s going all ‘grinchy’

https://order-order.com/2026/10/30/libdems-cancel-all-staff-christmas-party/#comments