It was the last Autumn Statement before the General Election and Lib Dems were keen to show what we had put into it. Nick Clegg announced £150 million to help improve treatment for young people with eating disorders.

Stephen Tall announced he was stepping down as c0-editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. It was impending fatherhood rather than a seven year itch that had led to his decision. He remains part of the team, thankfully, and will still be doing surveys and writing whenever the fancy takes him.

The Cleggster did a live Q and A session with young people – and they liked what he had to say. Nick joked it was the best poll rating he’d had in a long time.

Jeremy Thorpe died and Nick Harvey paid eloquent tribute to him at his funeral:

From all the accounts I’ve heard, and indeed the very folklore of North Devon, one can imagine the impact of the young Jeremy’s arrival: the recent Oxford graduate and aspiring young barrister, charismatic, dashing, hugely energetic and blessed with all the campaigning attributes of the ideal candidate. He had a style all of his own: brown Trilby hat, waistcoat and gold watch-chain, and driving around in a legendary big black Humber (still in a barn not far from Barnstaple).

With his powers of mimicry he could respond to hecklers in brilliant imitations of their own voices. He could mock people and win their vote. He would ring the Bonham-Carters and other political families brilliantly impersonating their relatives and causing absolute mischief. His astonishing memory for faces and names enabled him to boom loud greetings to people in the streets and markets, to their lasting delight and the envy of their friends.

An entire generation of ladies took him to their hearts; he was mothered to distraction and I have come across several men now in their late forties and early fifties named Jeremy in his honour.

The indomitable Lilian Prowse served as his agent for over 25 years building up the Liberal organisation from the grass roots. In the early years she often had her four children in tow and so a dynasty was born: three have served on the local council and Malcolm – the youngest – became the longest serving council leader in the country. Two of the family are here today.

Between them they revived the historic Liberal tradition. When Jeremy captured the seat in 1959, it was one of just three in the country secured against Conservative opposition.

With wit, zeal and sheer panache, the new MP was the personification of hope when it was needed most. If Jo Grimond gave re-birth to the party’s intellectual self-confidence and defined the Liberal creed for a new era, Jeremy – succeeding him in 1967 – gave re-birth to its campaigning self-confidence, turning it into a truly national force once again.

He was the first politician fully to embrace the television age, the first to hit the campaign trail in a helicopter and both the first – and rather memorably the last – to deploy a hovercraft.

Campaigning through the summer of 1974 he came up with the wheeze of pulling up at beaches on a hovercraft and addressing startled holiday-makers with a loud hailer from the deck. But it all ended in disaster when, at one stop, he’d just reached that point in his speech where he lauded this fine British invention, when he realised that his feet were getting rather wet. The hovercraft was sinking beneath him.

And, finally: Tim Farron bowed out as Party President:

The question I’ve been asked a lot in the last few days is ‘what are you going to do next?’ My answer is that I plan to get out there and be a loyal foot soldier and knock on a lot of doors, to support our activists and candidates across the country. I have a plan to visit dozens of constituencies from the Highlands to Cornwall and all parts in between over the coming weeks.

I will also keep talking about some of the issues I have during my Presidency – the need for an ambitious infrastructure revolution, new homes, being stridently pro-immigration, supporting a living wage and rebuilding a Liberal political consensus modelled on the boldness of Beveridge.

Finally I want to thank you. I want to thank you if you supported me, voted for me, tweeted or emailed me, given me advice or support or let me know your concerns. I am proud of our work over the last four years and I hope you will support Sal as much as you did me.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social