Whether I’m speaking to my Diabetes Specialist Nurse, to my consultant, or to my colleagues in Westminster, it is clear that the ‘diabetes epidemic’ is increasingly being recognised as of major concern. Of the 2.9 million people in the UK living with diabetes, a worrying proportion will suffer additional complications and will require hospital care. In the last year alone, another 130,000 people have been diagnosed with diabetes, and it is likely that they were already experiencing diabetes-related complications at the time of diagnosis.

The Primary Care Diabetes Society (PDCS) (with support from healthcare company Sanofi) recently carried out an extensive piece of research looking specifically at why people with diabetes end up in hospital and how it can be avoided.

I had the pleasure of chairing the working group of clinical experts behind the report, and I was both concerned and impressed in equal measure. My concern came when the extent of the challenge we face became even clearer — yet I was singularly impressed by the innovation and creativity demonstrated by the diabetes clinical community in tackling this problem head on.

Baroness (Barbara) Young, Chief Executive of Diabetes UK, spoke just last week on the alarming rise in the prevalence of diabetes, issuing this warning: “the time for action is now. We must reverse this trend if more people are not going to suffer unnecessarily and if diabetes is not going to bankrupt the NHS”.

She is of course, absolutely right. The human cost and the cost to the NHS of diabetes and its related complications is indeed staggering -– with some reports suggesting that it now accounts for 10% of the NHS budget.

Diabetes, by its very nature, is a complex condition and treatment spans the entire NHS care pathway. As such there are many costs attributed to it, particularly when you take into consideration the multiple complications that it can cause, including blindness, amputation, kidney failure, heart attack and stroke. More often than not these additional complications will result in a person being admitted into hospital — a medical intervention that places strain on the patient, and on the public purse.

In our assessment of current clinical practices, it became clear that, across the continuum of care, there are many gaps through which a patient can fall — managing their diabetes poorly and suffering complications, or having their condition diagnosed too late.

The socio-economic circumstances of a person with diabetes can also have a considerable impact on their access to care and the way in which they manage, or mismanage, their condition. The Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) community, older people, children and young people, and those from deprived socio-economic backgrounds are all susceptible to mismanagement, complications and the subsequent reliance on costly acute care services.

As with many organisational challenges, much of this comes down to communication and access to information.

The working group expressed their frustration at the way in which patient information is shared, or indeed not shared. To ensure that a patient has access to the appropriate treatment and specialist care it is vital that their doctors and nurses are fully informed as to their condition and medication. Whilst the general patient population may expect it, it is unfortunately not always the case. Dialogue between health care professionals across the entire NHS therefore must be multidirectional, open and fluid as standard.

Most importantly, this research shines a light on the value of sharing good practice.

There is a plethora of initiatives taking place across the NHS that are looking to keep people with diabetes in control and out of hospital. This can be as simple as putting a patient on an ‘at-risk’ register, to re-writing the entire care pathway. I hope that those on the frontline continue to innovate, to continue to share their best practice, and most of all continue to strive to attain excellence in diabetes care.

For my part, I will continue to work with other parliamentarians on behalf of the 2.9million people with diabetes, and the millions more who will be diagnosed with the condition in the years ahead for their right to the right care, at the right time.

* Lord (Chris) Rennard is a Lib Dem peer and former chief executive of the party.

The Conservatives had ‘thrown the kitchen sink’ into winning the Ealing Southall by-election in the summer of 2007 and they had raised expectations of a Tory victory based on the appointment of a well known local Asian businessman as ‘David Cameron’s Conservative candidate’ in a seat with a lot of Conservative Councillors.

But on polling day, the Conservatives not only failed to win the by-election (or even overtake the Lib Dems), but they fell from second place to third in the parliamentary by-election in Sedgfield following Tony Blair’s resignation from Parliament.

Andrew Grice, here in the Independent, commented on the state of politics then. The press that summer was very hostile to Cameron; his party was split, with the right-wing baying for his blood (some things don’t change) and Conservative MPs were having a major row about the future of grammar schools.

If there had been a General Election in 2007, then, David Cameron would have been an ex-party leader by the end of that year. One Tory peer, now a minister, told me that he advised Cameron that Summer that ‘it just couldn’t get any worse’.

Fortunately for David Cameron, Gordon Brown as the new Prime Minister squandered the only real opportunity for an election victory that he ever had (the opportunity of being ‘new’). The General Election campaign that had been planned by the Labour Party machine for Autumn 2007 was called off. The Labour team in charge of those preparations must have felt hugely frustrated knowing that with the right approach to a potential General Election from their Leader, Labour would have won a fourth term.

My point is simply that much can change over four years. Anyone who thinks that they can predict with confidence what will happen politically in four years time doesn’t understand history. Those of us who remember dramatic changes in political fortunes between say 1979 and 1981 and between 1981 and 1983 should never make the mistake of making four year forecasts.

The events of Summer 2007 did, however, do much to shape the political scene that we see now. Brown blew it. Cameron got lucky. Ming Campbell stood down. These may be considered to be one-off events. They remind us of Harold MacMillan’s advice that the future is not inevitable but is shaped ‘by events’. Who knows what events may shape the next four years?

But for Liberal Democrats wanting to make a success of the next four years, we have to learn what we can from past events. They tell us that the difficulties of coalition were almost entirely predictable. Those of us who can remember the ‘Lib-Lab Pact’ of the 70s are well aware of the damage to our opinion poll ratings when many people perceive us as ‘siding with one or other of our main rivals’.

It is perhaps easy these days to forget that there were times when we were seen as being far too close to Tony Blair’s ‘New’ Labour. People who now forecast our doom forget that, in December 1996, we were at 9.5% in an opinion poll just six months before the 1997 General Election, and that we seemed to be saying little different to Labour.

What got the party out of these difficulties must be studied carefully.

We were still in great difficulty at the start of the 1997 General Election (11% in the polls). But during the campaign we were able to establish clear differences with both other parties and we were able to do so on issues that were the major concerns of the voters — as opposed to the historically important concerns that inspired many of us join the party. We made plain our differences with both other parties on issues like crime, health and education, and said rather less about electoral reform. More importantly, we were able to relate key messages on those issues to the constituencies that we represented, or had a serious chance of representing.

Constituency based polling that I was undertaking at the time was most helpful to this process. It showed how Lib Dems could potentially defy a national trend with the right approach with their local communities. We were squeezed nationally by the clamour to get rid of John Major, but still added 6% to our poll ratings during the course of the national campaign (and finished just 1% down compared to 1992). But more significantly, our number of MPs more than doubled from 18 to 46.

This didn’t happen by chance and nor did subsequent increases in our number of MPs and electoral successes at different levels. The task now for Liberal Democrats is to look again at the lessons of our history and learn from them.

* Chris Rennard was the Liberal Democrats Director of Campaigns & Elections from 1989 to 2003 and Chief Executive 2003 – 2009. He was in charge of the party’s target seat campaign in 1997 when the party more than doubled its number of MPs. He is now a Liberal Democrat peer.

Almost all those people who have consistently supported the cause of electoral reform for much longer than he has take a different view. It is very clear that voting against change on May 5th will mean sticking with the present voting system for the foreseeable future. It is incredibly hard to overcome the self-interested nature of most sitting MPs in order to get a change in voting system. The referendum on May 5th will be the first chance that voters will have had to change the system since it was effectively introduced in 1872 in wholly different political circumstances to those of today.

A change to the Alternative Vote system was recommended by a Royal Commission as far back as 1910. It was recognised 101 years ago that First Past the Post doesn’t work when you have more than two political parties. A “no” vote in the referendum will leave us with the voting system that was appropriate for the nineteenth century not the twenty-first.

David Owen was simply being disingenuous when he followed the line of opponents of electoral reform and suggested that votes for a party that comes second or third will have “more weight” than votes for a party that comes first. The whole point of the reform is that every vote will be of equal value and people will not have to fear “wasting” their votes on candidates who may not win. He even repeated lines saying that that more power may go to extremists with AV when the reverse is true. He fails to explain why the BNP urge their supporters to vote ‘no’.

Lord Owen further argued that AV was rejected by enquiries. AV was in fact a part (but only a part) of the recommended system proposed by the Jenkins Commission in 1998. It is of course widely used by political parties including all those supported by David Owen over the last 30 years when they are choosing a single person. There are a number of completely bogus arguments against AV now being made by those who are determined to hang on to “First Past the Post” for choosing MPs. At the same time, there appear to be no coherent arguments emanating from the same sources to defend First Past the Post.

We hear claims from others in the ‘no’ camp that AV is “un-British”. One problem with this claim is that the system is used to vote for leaders and candidates in the British Conservative Party (as well as almost all other British political parties) and other organisations representing 14 million people in Britain. I am waiting to hear David Cameron declare his own party to be “un-British” because it used AV to choose him as Leader.

The most absurd claims from the ‘no’ campaign are that “it would cost too much to count the votes if we used AV”. This claim is probably worthy of many dictators. They could say that their country can only afford to count the votes for the governing party and there wasn’t enough money to count the votes for opposing parties. The argument is a disgrace.

Lord Owen does not have an alternative strategy to deliver proportional representation. He led his closest followers in to a political cul de sac when as SDP Leader he failed to respect the referendum of SDP members on their future. I wrote about his “spoiling” tactics when he didn’t get his way in that referendum on the future of his party, I doubt if he will have many followers on this issue.

Lord Rennard is a Liberal Democrat peer, speaks for the party on constitutional reform issues and was a speaker at the “Yes to Fairer Votes” meeting at this weekend’s Lib Dem Conference.

His presence there emphasised his achievement in getting this Bill through Parliament in time to enable the referendum on switching to the Alternative Vote to take place on May 5th.

Of course people may not vote to change from First Past the Post. But I have never thought that any measure of electoral reform for Westminster would come about without a referendum. The self-preservation instincts of many MPs means that they are never likely to vote to change a system that got them elected. So the referendum is a great step forward for electoral reformers. Parliament eventually decided that the voters will have the final say on the matter. Nick Clegg can fairly be said to have made more progress on the issue of electoral reform for Westminster than we have seen in any period since a Royal Commission (set up by a Liberal Government) first recommended the use of AV to elect our MPs in 1910.

For Lib Dem peers, it was certainly felt ironic to be going through the lobbies with Tory peers ranging from Ken Baker to Michael Heseltine, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Michael Dobbs to Michael Howard. Of course many of the more “Thatcherite” peers who served in the cabinets of the 1980 were led by Michael Forsyth in an ambush aimed at de-railing the referendum. They effectively showed their contempt for the coalition and also for David Cameron. For Lib Dems who have reservations about the coalition it is always re-assuring to know that what you are doing is so strongly opposed by Lords Tebbit, Forsyth, Lawson and Lamont.

Much of the Thatcherite cabinet of the 1980s joined in an unholy and deeply conservative alliance with opportunistic Labour peers who failed in their filibustering attempts to block a constitutional reform giving power to the people over their choice of MPs. Labour have many eloquent lawyers on their benches in the Lords, but none of them could explain their unprincipled ‘u turn’ on a measure that was in their manifesto of last year. An AV referendum was also in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill that their Government carried through the Commons last year before being lost in the “wash up” at the end of the last Parliament.

The behaviour of many Labour peers on this Bill was in marked contrast to Ed Milliband’s statement (Why the alternative vote gets my vote) in The Guardian on Thursday about his principled support for AV on May 5th. Whilst disagreeing with much that Nick Clegg may be responsible for, he rejected the expedient route of opposing something just because Nick Clegg favours it. Expediency over electoral reform is one of the reasons that the twentieth century in British politics could be deemed to be a largely Conservative century.

Of course, the referendum on electoral reform only came about in return for Lib Dem support for a fundamental review of constituency boundaries. Labour strongly opposed the plan to cut the number of MPs from 650 to 600. But with over 300 more directly elected full-time parliamentarians in the Scottish Parliament, the European Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the Greater London Authority and the Northern Ireland Assembly than we had only a few decades ago it is harder to justify the figure of 650 MPs. In any event, I doubt if Labour will seriously want to go in to the next General Election as the only major party promising that “if you vote for us we will give you 50 more MPs”.

Labour didn’t like the degree to which constituency electorates will be equalised. But the idea that MPs should have roughly the same number of electors was actually a key demand of the Chartists in the nineteenth century who wanted to end the “rotten boroughs”. There could perhaps have been more flexibility in this equalising measure but arguments about boundary distribution are an intrinsic problem with First Past the Post systems.

Labour’s desire to avoid a boundary review would have left most constituencies at the 2015 General Election with boundaries based on electoral rolls from 2000. That would hardly have been fair. Boundary reviews inevitably reduce the number of constituencies where population has fallen and create “new” constituencies where it has grown. But all the academic evidence shows that the relative advantage likely to be gained from the new boundary review by the Conservatives and at the expense of Labour is likely to be very small indeed. The net change may well be negligible compared to what would have happened in a normal boundary review and it will be almost entirely as a result of the relative over-representation of Wales compared to other parts of the UK.

Much of the recent parliamentary battle was in my view based on a massive misapprehension by both the Conservative and Labour Parties about the likely consequences of the new review of constituency boundaries. Labour peers in the opinion of many abused parliamentary procedures to try and block this Bill. Their tactics were probably based in part on an attempt to show how a tough approach to opposition in the Lords could work rather than a pragmatic one. It was largely driven by those most opposed to electoral reform. But after all the parliamentary skirmishes, Labour’s tactics failed in every regard. The coalition is stronger. But Ed Milliband and Nick Clegg will be voting together for electoral reform on May 5th.

Lord Rennard is a former Chief Executive of the Liberal Democrats and speaks for the party on political and constitutional reform issues in the House of Lords.

The PVSC Bill has been subject to an extensive and well organised filibuster on Labour’s benches abusing the House of Lords procedures that provide for “self-regulation”. The attempt to talk out the Bill and prevent the referendum taking place on May 5th has mostly appeared to come from former Labour MPs who now sit in the House of Lords. This group is strongly opposed to voters ever having a say on the electoral system by which their MPs are chosen. But they are merely the infantry deploying tactics that are carefully orchestrated. The discovery of an “opposition speaking grid” in a Ladies loo provided written proof of how Labour’s “high command” in the Lords organised the all night filibuster on 17/18 January.

Amendments in the House of Lords that are very similar are generally grouped together to assist sensible scrutiny and debate. Labour have exploited the rights of any peer to keep tabling amendments and then “de-group” their amendments so that there is a separate lengthy debate on each amendment however similar it is to other amendments and however frivolous it may be. This was the tactic threatened by a former Labour Chief Whip in the Lords even before the debates began.

When the Committee stage in the House of Lords began on November 30th, there were 47 groups of amendments tabled for consideration. But the tactic of constantly tabling amendments and then “de-grouping them” meant that we started the 14 day in Committee last Wednesday having considered 96 groups of amendments and already facing another 40. The tactic was most easily shown in the all night sitting on the night of January 17th. Very similar amendments were tabled by different Labour peers to say that the number of MPs should be either 630, 640 or 650. These amendments then were “de-grouped” so that there could be a separate 3 hour debate on each one and no real progress made on the Bill in the nine hours from midnight until 9 am. But when Labour peers wanted to get home early the next afternoon they dealt with 3 amendments in an hour.

Labour are trying to deny that they are filibustering and there have been some interesting exchanges between myself and Lord McAvoy on this subject. Here was our most recent exchange. I took the trouble of looking up how often as Tommy McAvoy he had spoken in the House of Commons in the last four years. The answer was just once in four years when he muttered just four words. Now as Lord McAvoy he has spoken 77 times on this Bill. This is still less than half as frequently as another arch opponent of electoral reform Lord Foulkes who probably holds the record on this Bill with 189 contributions. It is certainly not consistent behaviour with the sort of ‘new politics’ promised by Ed Milliband.

This week, there is the possibility that some compromises may be made on the Bill. Labour may realise that they are damaging themselves through this sort of behaviour. In any event it seems clear now (especially to many of the independent crossbenchers) that these tactics must be brought to an end and that procedures in the Lords will change. Self regulation in the chamber has not prevented repetitive, irrelevant and unnecessarily lengthy speeches. The “usual channels” (ie. discussion between the whips) are not working and a Business Committee is now needed. It could make sure that in future similar amendments must be taken together. But it would be a great shame if procedural reforms have to go further and Labour’s tactics prevent the sort of proper parliamentary scrutiny in future that they have a legitimate right to seek as an opposition party.

Lord Rennard is a Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords

I compared the process of by-elections to elect hereditary peers to the campaign run by Lord Blackadder to elect Baldrick in the rotten borough of Dunny on the Wold. David Steel’s Bill would end these by-elections and allow peers to retire voluntarily. A much more fundamental draft Bill for Lords reform is expected early next year.

But this debate showed again how hard it will be to achieve fundamental reform of the House of Lords.

The Hansard for my contribution and the rest of the debate is available online here. Alternatively, my contribution to the  debate on is 1 hr 50 mins in from the start on the Parliament website.

Lord Rennard is a Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords

Two controversial measures have been put together in one Bill as part of the coalition agreement.  The Government won every vote in the Commons on this Bill with comfortable majorities. But Labour’s first major challenge to the Bill was only defeated by 14 votes on Monday. There wasn’t a strong turnout from Conservative peers and winning required the support of a significant number of cross-benchers. It will take some time for new peers to be introduced so there may be a number of close votes in December.

Labour’s first challenge to letting the Bill proceed was to declare that it may be ‘hybrid’.  This meant that it would have been referred to ‘the Examiners’ and if found hybrid would be dealt with by a special Select Committee ie. significantly delayed until it would possibly be too late to have the AV referendum in May.  Funnily enough they made no suggestion that the Bill might be hybrid in the period since it was introduced in the Commons in June.  In debate I raised the point by Mark Pack on Lib Dem Voice.  Labour were not able to answer this point when I made it and lost the vote by 14.

Over two days nearly fifty Labour peers outlined their various objections in speeches and interventions.  I tried to focus on the basic principles of letting the voters have a say in how their MPs are chosen.  I asked the House, “to imagine an organisation with 650 consultants working for it, each of them on a fixed-term contract. What would we think if that organisation gave the 650 consultants the exclusive power to determine all the details over whether to renew their contracts? We would say the organisation was barmy, yet this is effectively what happens at present with the House of Commons.”

I reminded the House of Labour’s manifesto commitments, “To begin the task of building a new politics, we will let the British people decide on whether to make Parliament more democratic and accountable in referenda on reform of the House of Commons and House of Lords, to be held on the same day, by October 2011.  To ensure that every MP is supported by the majority of their constituents voting at each election, we will hold a referendum on introducing the Alternative Vote for elections to the House of Commons”.

Most of Labour’s objections to the proposal for the referendum and the new Boundary Commission processes were made in the form of interventions in my speech.

You can read the speech and interventions here and Parliament Live TV also lets you see the whole debate over two days if you want. My contribution is here and that of my noble friend Lord Tyler here.

Lord Rennard is a Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, and if so how, they will raise concerns about the imprisonment of the Nobel Peace Prize Winner Liu Xiaobo during the Prime-Minister’s visit to China.

This follows me raising the issue on the World at One and in the Guardian because my view is that doing good business in not incompatible with publicly calling for respect for human rights and freedom of speech.

Liu Xiaobo needs to know that people in Britain are appalled that he was sent to 11 years imprisonment (in a one day trial on Christmas Day last year) for attempting to speak out in favour of freedom of speech. His wife has been kept under house arrest and his lawyer was prevented from leaving the country today on the basis that he was suspected of attempting to make his way to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize recently awarded to Liu Xiaobo.

The Chinese Government says that it wants friendly relations between our Governments and peoples. But if we want to be friendly with the people of China, we need to be able to let them know that we believe that their human rights should be respected.

The Government of China will not win real friends by attempting to bully people such as the Norwegians who decided to award Liu the Nobel Peace Prize. As the Chair of the Nobel Committee Thorbjoern Jagland said in the citation, China’s new status in the world “must entail increased responsibility. China is in breach of several international agreements to which it is a signatory, as well as of its own provisions concerning political rights. Through the severe punishment meted out to him, Liu has become the foremost symbol of this wide ranging struggle for human rights in China.” The campaign to establish universal human rights in China is being waged by many Chinese, both in China itself and abroad.

We owe it to those peacefully working for human rights to support them publicly. We want the Chinese Government to understand that they would begin to win many friends by releasing Liu Xiaobo immediately and allowing him to receive his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.

Lord Rennard is a Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords

Chris Rennard writes about the Henley result…

I am enjoying this debate and for the record:

1) I don’t always comment in detail on things read by our opponents – but I do welcome any constructive debate within the party on these issues – especially contributions from those who also work hard in these campaigns.

2) I am not generally “hands on” in the organisation and management of our by-elections these days (unlike when I was Director of Campaigns & Elections 1989-2003 or a member of the team in various by-elections from Edge Hill in 1979 to Greenwich in 1987). But as Chief Executive (in the structure debated and agreed within the party in 2003) I have overall responsibility for all of our election campaigns. I have complete confidence in our campaigns teams led by Hilary Stephenson (Director of Campaigns), campaigns staff and the people I ask to be agent in these campaigns such as Miranda Roberts who was superb in Henley.

3) There is a major misconception on the part of some of the people commenting that the Lib Dem performance is entirely determined by what we do and our national position. This is not so. The results are also determined by the relative national standing of the other parties – and by what they do, who they choose and the tactical situation etc.

People point to our successes in places like Newbury and Christchurch in 1993 or Romsey in 2000 and say why not Henley in 2008? One difference is that the Conservatives are at about 45% in national poll ratings compared to 30% or less then and people are much less conscious of how awful John Major’s Government was. We found it hard in that era to win Labour seats like Barking or Dagenham (our share fell significantly in these by-elections on the same day in 1994 that we won Eastleigh from the Tories). We found it even harder in seats like Dudley West and Wirral South where Labour started a good second to the Tories, we were third and got squeezed.

Our Crewe and Henley results should be seen in this context. They indicate that our support is more robust and our techniques even more effective than they were then.

4) The issue of candidates is of course very important in any campaign. Both Elizabeth Shenton and Stephen Kearney did us proud. But it has been very rare in by-elections since Orpington for us to win without very local candidates. Sarah Teather proved that it can be done (as did Diana Maddock, Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins and Clement Freud).

Of particular note to this and other debates about by-elections generally is that our choice of candidates is not with me or the Leader but with our local members and those who run the candidate approval systems. Our Leader and campaign teams work enthusiatically with the choice that is made for them. In Henley we worked hard to promote Stephen’s local credentials and he moved in as soon as selected.

5) The issue of the amount of paper crops up frequently. I did a lot of canvassing and knocking up over the last couple of days – so I heard the general public reaction to the paper blitz. But I didn’t genuinely feel that anyone was not voting for us because we tried too hard. There were complaints about the amount of paper delivered by both the Conservative and Lib Dem campaigns. But then consider the fact that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats polled 85% of the vote between us.

6) In relation to Henley specifically, only a few people were in a position to monitor how our campaign led to a big increase in our level of support over the period of the campaign. Neither we nor the Conservatives started where the 2005 General Election ended.

The Conservatives are trying to destabilise us by criticising both me and our by-election tactics/performance. I find some of this amusing as one of their most senior by-election team in Crewe confirmed to me on the night that they are simply trying to “copy my text book”. But they don’t really understand it or follow it as well as we can when we really mobilise effectively. They should now publish the private ICM poll that they conducted at the start of the election period. This would prove who “won the campaign” in terms of shifting support. We went up significantly in the campaign and they went down by a equally significant margin.

1) I don’t always comment in detail on things read by our opponents – but I do welcome any constructive debate within the party on these issues – especially contributions from those who also work hard in these campaigns.

2) I am not generally “hands on” in the organisation and management of our by-elections these days (unlike when I was Director of Campaigns & Elections 1989-2003 or a member of the team in various by-elections from Edge Hill in 1979 to Greenwich in 1987). But as Chief Executive (in the structure debated and agreed within the party in 2003) I have overall responsibility for all of our election campaigns. I have complete confidence in our campaigns teams led by Hilary Stephenson (Director of Campaigns), campaigns staff and the people I ask to be agent in these campaigns such as Miranda Roberts who was superb in Henley.

3) There is a major misconception on the part of some of the people commenting that the Lib Dem performance is entirely determined by what we do and our national position. This is not so. The results are also determined by the relative national standing of the other parties – and by what they do, who they choose and the tactical situation etc.

People point to our successes in places like Newbury and Christchurch in 1993 or Romsey in 2000 and say why not Henley in 2008? One difference is that the Conservatives are at about 45% in national poll ratings compared to 30% or less then and people are much less conscious of how awful John Major’s Government was. We found it hard in that era to win Labour seats like Barking or Dagenham (our share fell significantly in these by-elections on the same day in 1994 that we won Eastleigh from the Tories). We found it even harder in seats like Dudley West and Wirral South where Labour started a good second to the Tories, we were third and got squeezed.

Our Crewe and Henley results should be seen in this context. They indicate that our support is more robust and our techniques even more effective than they were then.

4) The issue of candidates is of course very important in any campaign. Both Elizabeth Shenton and Stephen Kearney did us proud. But it has been very rare in by-elections since Orpington for us to win without very local candidates. Sarah Teather proved that it can be done (as did Diana Maddock, Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins and Clement Freud).

Of particular note to this and other debates about by-elections generally is that our choice of candidates is not with me or the Leader but with our local members and those who run the candidate approval systems. Our Leader and campaign teams work enthusiatically with the choice that is made for them. In Henley we worked hard to promote Stephen’s local credentials and he moved in as soon as selected.

5) The issue of the amount of paper crops up frequently. I did a lot of canvassing and knocking up over the last couple of days – so I heard the general public reaction to the paper blitz. But I didn’t genuinely feel that anyone was not voting for us because we tried too hard. There were complaints about the amount of paper delivered by both the Conservative and Lib Dem campaigns. But then consider the fact that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats polled 85% of the vote between us.

6) In relation to Henley specifically, only a few people were in a position to monitor how our campaign led to a big increase in our level of support over the period of the campaign. Neither we nor the Conservatives started where the 2005 General Election ended.

The Conservatives are trying to destabilise us by criticising both me and our by-election tactics/performance. I find some of this amusing as one of their most senior by-election team in Crewe confirmed to me on the night that they are simply trying to “copy my text book”. But they don’t really understand it or follow it as well as we can when we really mobilise effectively. They should now publish the private ICM poll that they conducted at the start of the election period. This would prove who “won the campaign” in terms of shifting support. We went up significantly in the campaign and they went down by a equally significant margin.

Twenty years ago the ‘merger’ of the Liberal Party and the SDP was generally seen by the media more as a ‘split’ than it was a bringing together of two parties.

Anthony King and Ivor Crewe, in their history of the SDP, have an absolutely damning section on the conduct of David Owen and his clutch of supporters over this period.

The acrimonious ballot of SDP members led to the inevitable collapse in support for a party alignment whose unique selling proposition was initially based mostly upon the concept of two parties working together.

The launch of the new party was without any clear message. The new slogan (I opposed it at the time), ‘The New Choice: The Best Future’, was supposed to last a decade. It probably lasted ten days. The compromise party name of ‘Social and Liberal Democrats’ was unworkable.

The beginnings of the new party could not have been more difficult. The Owenite SDP was devious and undemocratic in maintaining the branding of the original SDP. Tragically, they retained the massive financial support of the original SDP’s main backer, David Sainsbury.

Owen’s supporters fought spoiling campaigns in successive parliamentary by-elections. The effect was to deprive the newly formed ‘merged party’ of gaining the momentum required to establish early credibility.

At the same time, a number of deluded and disappointed Liberals also formed their own ‘Liberal Party’ which caused confusion, split votes, and helped our opponents.

The first national election for the party saw our share of the vote in the European Elections of 1989 fall to just 6%. Our national poll rating was just 5% in July 1989. The poor political situation and poor management led to most of the staff being made redundant that summer.

The turning points were in 1990. We maintained our local government base with strong local campaigns against the poll tax. I returned to my Liverpool home to help fight the Bootle parliamentary by-election. Owenites and so-called Liberals stood against us, but they were both humiliated.

Owen’s party polled just 155 votes – whilst the Monster Raving Loony Party’s Screaming Lord Sutch polled 450. “Owen’s in Sutch as state that he can’t beat the Loonies” was The Sun’s headline. The Owenites packed up that month.

In October, we fought the Eastbourne by-election overturning a 16,000 Tory majority to win by 4,550. Liberal Democrat opinion poll ratings went from 8% to 18% that month. The mood in the party that greeted this win was euphoric. But the truth was that we had simply ensured the survival of our party.

* Chris Rennard became Director of Campaigns and Elections in August 1989 and is now Chief Executive of the Liberal Democrats.