Liberal Democrats (UK)

This article is about the British political party. For the similarly named parties in other countries, see Liberalism.

The Liberal Democrats, often shortened to Lib Dems, is a liberal political party in the United Kingdom. The party was founded in 1988 from a merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party. It was the third-largest party in the House of Commons from 1992 to 2015 before it was surpassed by the Scottish National Party and it has been again since 2024. The party was in a coalition government with the Conservative Party from 2010 to 2015. It has been led by Ed Davey since 2020.

Liberal Democrats
Abbreviation	Lib Dems
Leader	Ed Davey
Deputy Leader	Daisy Cooper
President	Mark Pack[1]
Lords Leader	Lord Newby
CEO	Mike Dixon[2]
Founded	3 March 1988; 37 years ago (1988-03-03)
Merger of	Liberal Party Social Democratic Party
Headquarters	8–10 Great George Street London SW1P 3AE[3]
Youth wing	Young Liberals
LGBT wing	LGBT+ Liberal Democrats
Membership (2023)	90,000+[4]: 13
Ideology	Liberalism[5] Social liberalism[5][6] Pro-Europeanism[7][8]
Political position	Centre[9][10][11][12][13] to centre-left[14][15]
European affiliation	Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe
International affiliation	Liberal International
Sister party	Alliance Party of Northern Ireland[16]
Colours	Orange[17]
Slogan	"Build a Brighter Future."[18]
Anthem	"The Land"
Governing body	Federal Board
State parties	English Liberal Democrats Scottish Liberal Democrats Welsh Liberal Democrats
House of Commons[a]	72 / 650
House of Lords[19]	79 / 786
London Assembly	2 / 25
Scottish Parliament	4 / 129
Welsh Assembly	1 / 60
Local government[20]	3,095 / 18,646
Directly elected mayors	1 / 14
Website
www.libdems.org.uk

Ed Davey was elected as leader of the party in August 2020 after having served as acting leader since December 2019.

Jo Swinson lead the party from 22 July 2019 to 13 December 2019.

Vince Cable lead the party from 20 July 2017 to 22 July 2019.

Nick Clegg was the Leader of the Liberal Democrats and was also the Deputy Prime Minister from
11 May 2010 – 8 May 2015.

The Liberal Democrats are strong supporters of the European Union, as well as environmentalism and they are in favour of creating a new British House of Commons which is elected using proportional representation. They also disagree with Britain being a part of conflicts like the Iraq War. The party also promotes social liberalism and has long supported LGBTQ+ rights.

The party has 72^[21] out of 650 seats in the House of Commons, 84^[22] out of 783 seats in the House of Lords, 16 out of 73 British seats in the European Parliament, 5 out of 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament and 1 out of 60 seats in the Welsh Assembly.

In elections, the party usually gets the most votes in places like northern Scotland, south-west London, south-west England and mid-Wales. Members of the party are mostly more middle-class people who went to university.

Policies

Most Liberal Democrats believe in the following things:

• The House of Commons should be elected using proportional representation.
• There should be elections held for the House of Lords.
• There should be more forms of renewable energy as well as cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.

Former party leaders

• Paddy Ashdown (July 1988 – August 1999)
• Charles Kennedy (August 1999 – January 2006)
• Menzies Campbell (January 2006 – October 2007)
• Vince Cable (October 2007 – December 2007) *
• Nick Clegg (December 2007 – May 2015)
• Tim Farron (July 2015 – June 2017)
• Vince Cable (July 2017 – July 2019)
• Jo Swinson (July 2019 – December 2019)

Asterisk (*) means that this person was an interim leader, meaning he was just standing in as leader because the previous leader resigned.

Notes

1. The party does not contest seats in Northern Ireland, although its sister party, the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, does.