Good news for Ed Miliband; no one noticed

One other thing from the Catch-Up Service over the holiday period. The main political parties published their annual accounts on 28 July, and only my excellent colleague Oliver Wright noticed. The Labour and Liberal Democrat membership figures went unreported, and they are interesting (the Conservatives do not seem to bother with such details; they prefer to list donations).

Labour membership (pdf) was up 38,000 from the end of 2009 to the end of 2010, at 193,961, which is good news for Ed Miliband.

Liberal Democrat membership (pdf) was up 6,000 to 65,038, which is surprising for a party faced with the compromises of government, a party which has lost about half of its support and which has broken its promise on tuition fees.

Photograph of Ed Miliband speaking at his school, Haverstock, on Monday: Oli Scarff

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• OnTheWayOut

  The Lib Dem figures are interesting…but how much of that increase happened before the election, or immediately after?

  I wonder who is joining the Lib Dems these days? Five or ten years ago, say, there would be a number of reasons.

  1. Single currency, and general pro-EU sentiment
  2. Student Loans
  3. Unlikely to have to bear responsibility for government
  4. The Lib Dem civil liberties agenda
  5. Opposition to overseas wars
  6. Liberal criminal justice and immigration policy
  7. 50p tax rate

  These have all been abandoned by the Lib Dems, adopted by other parties, or been completely discredited.

  Also, five years ago, a Lib Dem could reasonably have believed that sooner or later they would get a coalition, then they would get electoral reform, and this would lead to them becoming no. 1 or no. 2 party. Now it’s difficult to see how this could happen in the next 30 years.

  Next year’s figures will be very interesting. I don’t think that the Lib Dems will die – parties always seem to soldier on somehow – but they will have to find a reason for people to join. If they are still doing well on recruitment, it would be great to know who is joining.

• http://www.telfordassociates.com Kent Accountant

  What does this tell us? That more people are taking an active interest in the well-being of the nation?

  here

• http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7EQACN4TSXHA4DZGX5457C6SVY Wendy Nelson

  Labour leader Ed Milibrand is correct in his political announcement that Britain has a social malaise that WE in the United States have been trying to accept for many years.  As a White Anglo Saxon Protestant woman & corporate attorney married to a Hispanic GANGSTER Rapper musician with a shaved head & tattoos, I recently gave birth to my baby daughter who is Half-White/Half-Mexican-American to protest my Conservative father social repression who wants control in Los Angeles California USA.  For many of my White women friends who visited me in the hospital to celebrate the arrival of my daughter, I tell them to not get in trouble because in the UK, there is severe penalties if one were involved in riots.  For many people in my generation who come from wealthy families in the US, we do not want to see the gap between the wealthy & the poor widen.  As an American, it is refreshing to hear politicians talk about social issues reflecting on what is going on!!!