Ten thousand people have joined the Liberal Democrats since last Thursday’s general election, giving the party a welcome fillip after losing 48 of their 56 MPsin the vote.
The party said the fastest rate of growth in its history had pushed its overall membership to 55,649, which is still behind that of the Greens, SNP, Labour and the Conservatives.
More than half of the new Lib Dem members are aged under 35, with the oldest new member being 91. The vast majority (82%) have never been a member of the party; 72% have never previously been involved in any sort of campaign.
The Labour party has also reported 29,103 new members since polling day. The most recent number for the party’s overall membership, from 11 May, is 221,247. The Labour party does not release detailed information about its membership.
The president of the Liberal Democrats, Sal Brinton, attributed the surge in membership to the “liberal fightback”. “People were devastated by the results last week, but rather than sit back and lick their wounds, people have been invigorated and inspired,” she said.
“They are coming together to rebuild a strong, Liberal Democrat party, showing that the politics of hope and tolerance can thrive in the face of the politics of grievance and fear.”
The increase in Lib Dem membership resembles what was dubbed the Green surge, when thousands of people joined the Green party after it was excluded from broadcasters’ initial proposals for a TV debate in January this year. Leader Natalie Bennett said at one point that a new member was joining the party every 10 seconds.
The Green party currently has 66,557 members, which has risen by around 4,000 since polling day. One-third of the Green party’s membership claims to have voted for the Liberal Democrats in the 2010 election. (Those figures are for the Green party in England and Wales; its sister parties in Scotland and Northern Ireland have a combined total of more than 9,000 members.)
The SNP experienced the same phenomenon after the pro-independence campaign lost in last September’s referendum, with its membership surging by nearly 5,000 in the days following the vote.
“I am not sure that these new members remain very long or are likely to be active,” said Prof Paul Whitely of the Department of Government at the University of Essex. “If you think of them as strong supporters of a party who are prepared to give a donation by signing up to the Liberal Democrats, Greens, Ukip or whatever, that is probably the best way of thinking about them,” he added.
The Conservative party reportedly had around 150,000 members in September 2014, but it does not publish official membership figures. “We have a long and very noble tradition of not publishing those figures,” said a Conservative party spokesperson. “But I bet you can guess why [the Liberal Democrats and Labour party have] decided to share that information. “
“If they want to clutch at those straws, they’re very welcome to,” they added.
• This article was amended on 14 May 2015, to add a sentence in brackets clarifying that figures given for Green party membership referred to the Green party in England and Wales.
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