The LibDem wins keep on coming…

We’ve won Edinburgh West – well done Christine and team – a majority of 16k!

Westmorland and Lonsdale – Tim and team win by a margin of 21k!

Shropshire North – Helen and team win with a majority of a staggering 15k!

Harpenden and Berkhamstead – LibDem gain with a nearly 11k majority.

St Albans – LibDem hold by a stonking 20k majority

Oxwab – Layla wins by 14kish

Chippenham – LibDem gain by 8k!

Taunton – LibDem gain by 12k

Tiverton and Minehead – LD gain by 3k

Winchester – LD gain by a staggering (nearly) 14k

Lewes – gain by 13k

In other news, Jacob Rees-Mogg has gone!!!

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More new seats – and some old ones

Glastonbury and Somerton is one of those newly drawn constituencies that is difficult to predict, but it has been shown as a Lib Dem gain from Conservatives. Sarah Dyke was our by-election winner in the overlapping constituency of Somerton & Frome so we are delighted to see her success in the new patch.

And how lovely to see Tessa Munt returning to Parliament after losing her seat in 2015. Her new seat is called Wells and Mendip Hills.

Wera Hobhouse has held Bath, I’m pleased to say.

Over in North Norfolk Steff Aquarone has regained the North Norfolk seat where Norman Lamb was MP until he stood down in 2019.

Another scorching victory in Wimbledon where Paul Kohler has taken the seat from the Tories with a 12,000 majority. (There is a bit of a theme developing here – 12,000 is the cool number).

Dorking and Horley is another blue wall seat that has fallen to us. Chris Coghlan is our new MP there.

Another pleasing gain in Melksham & Devizes – so congratulations to Brian Mathew.

Sadly for us we did not manage to snatch Jeremy Hunt’s seat of Godalming & Ash, in spite of a strong campaign by our candidate.

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Thoughts from the ground in Newbury

I’ve been involved in general election campaigns in Newbury since 1987.

I haven’t dared make a forecast about whether we might win the seat this time.

But on the ground, something extraordinary happened. The Tories gave up. They didn’t put any posters up (there were just a couple isolated Tory posters where individuals put up old posters on their property). And on polling day, there was only a very thin Tory knocking up operation in evidence.

Fingers crossed for Lee and team. The Newbury result is due at around 7am.

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We’ve won Wokingham with a majority of over 8k

The outstanding LibDem results are coming so thick and fast it is difficult to keep up. I’m just going “Blimey – we’ve won XXX with a majority of YYY thousands” all the time.

But just hold on, for a moment, to the Wokingham result. We won with a majority of over 8k!!! Well done Clive Jones and team! This is the result of huge effort over many years!

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More blue wall and South West seats

Another South West seat has come our way – Ian Roome has won Devon North from the Conservatives. It was previously Nick Harvey’s seat – until 2015.

Hampshire North East has also come to us, thanks to Alex Brewer overturning a huge Conservative majority.

And Jess Brown-Fuller has achieved a whopping 12,000 majority in Chichester – another seat we have never held before!

Tunbridge Wells is similar – another blue wall seat that we have never held – but Mike Martin has taken it with a 8,000 majority.

We are building up pockets of Lim Demmery and in Cambridgeshire Ely & East Cambridgeshire lies alongside St Neots & Mid Cams and South Cambridgeshire. Charlotte Cane is now the MP for Ely & East Cambridgeshire.

Then what can we say about Thornbury & Yate? Claire Young has regained the seat previously held by revered Pensions Minister Steve Webb in the Coalition.

And now Yeovil is back with us! Adam Dance has managed to overturn the Conservatives to come in with a 12,000 majority. This was, of course, Paddy Ashdown’s seat, followed by David Laws so it is good to see it back in the fold again.

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We appear to have gone to sleep and woken up in Lib Dem heaven

I’ve woken up after a four hour sleep.

The size of our majorities (eg Cheadle – well done Tom and team!) is just extraordinary. And we are appearing to win seats where I didn’t know we had targets.

Chichester for example. We won it with a majority of over 12k. Looking at my target seats list, we overturned a Tory majority of over 19k and only 4 out of the 13 pre-election MRP surveys said we would win it. So it was very low down on our list of expectations.

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And still they come!

Another substantial gain – this time in South Cambridgeshire, which we have had our eyes on for many years.  Pippa Heylings  takes the seat from the Conservatives with a 10k majority.

Down in the South West Martin Wrigley has taken Newton Abbot – formerly a solid Conservative seat.

Back in Cambridgeshire Ian Sollom also took St Neots and Mid Cambs from the Tories.

And down in Eastbourne the town has returned to the Lib Dems – well done to Josh Babarinde who takes it with a 12,000 majority.

We have just heard that we have also regained Cheadle from the Conservatives – another seat lost in 2015.  This time thanks go to Tom Morrison who  achieved another 12,000 majority.

And well done to Clive Jones in Wokingham – John Redwood’s seat since 1987 – now Lib Dem.

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More Lib Dem wins

Well, Ed Davey’s record was short lived. Munira Wilson has held on to her Twickenham seat with a massive 21,000 majority!

Huge congratulations to Marie Goldman who took Chelmsford from the Conservatives with a good majority! This is the first time we have won that seat.

Then there is Steve Darling in Torbay, who turns the town orange again, following a challenging campaign.

And Lisa Smart in Hazel Grove (back with us at last!).

Bobby Dean regains Carshalton and Wallington – another seat we lost in 2015.

They are just announcing that we have regained Cheltenham, one of our top target seats, as well – well done to Max Wilkinson!

And now Sutton & Cheam returns to the Lib Dems with Luke Taylor.

Now Sarah Olney matches Ed Davey’s majority in her seat of Richmond Park.

And we have gained Stratford on Avon for the first time – previously held by Nadhim Zahawi with a huge majority.  Welcome to Manuela Perteghella!

Congratulations to all our new MPs – 1r so far.

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Ed Davey romps home

Ed Davey has held on to his Kingston & Surbiton seat, increasing his majority from 11k to 17k. This is the largest majority ever by a Lib Dem MP in a General Election – that’s quite something.

I am personally rather pleased that the location is given as Chessington, which lies within the constituency, because it is where I live. The count was held at the Kings Centre not far from my home. Up until now Chessington was only famous for our theme park.

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Our first gain(s) of the night!

Congratulations to Tom Gordon – our first MP so far, and our first gain, in Harrogate and Knaresborough.

Lib Dems first won the seat in 1997, and Phil Willis held on to it right through until he stood down in 2010, when it passed to the Conservatives. Wonderful to gain it back!

And the next one to come in is also technically a gain, though one we held before the meltdown in 2015. Eastleigh is triumphant again with Liz Jarvis!

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Tales from the campaign

Yet more waiting until the key results, from our perspective, start to come in.

So let’s fill in the time with reflections on the campaign. Thanks to Andy Boddington for this photo of farmer and Shropshire Councillor Richard Huffer who finds a different way to draw attention to the campaign for Matthew Green, PPC for South Shropshire.

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Scottish exit poll comes with a large pinch of salt

The Scottish constituency breakdown of the exit poll should be taken with a fairly large pinch of salt. In 2019, it predicted we would lose all of our seats north of the border and we won 4. The MRP models don’t generally do Scotland that well.

This time, it predicts that we are on 5 our current 4 plus Mid Dumbartonshire. That would coincide with our own hopes and, I think, backs up what we have picked up on the ground during the campaign. So, fingers crossed  that is accurate.

Labour are predicted to gain 29 seats, bringing them to 30, and the Tories are supposed to double their seats from 6 to 12. The SNP are predicted to do worse than even the most pessimistic predictions, with just 10 seats, down from 48.

However, it seems unlikely that the Tories will double their seats, least of all themselves who are doing a bit of expectation management on this. Nobody really believes that their current Westminster leader Stephen Flynn will lose his Aberdeen South seat to them, a key target for Labour. Pete Wishart would also lose his Perth seat to the Conservatives.  However, there may be a return for Stephen Gethins, beaten by Wendy Chamberlain in North East Fife in 2019 and now standing in Arbroath.

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Ed Davey: Lib Dems on course for best results in a century

Ed Davey made these comments after the polls closed:

The Liberal Democrats are on course for our best results in a century, thanks to our positive campaign with health and care at its heart.

I am humbled by the millions of people who backed the Liberal Democrats to both kick the Conservatives out of power and deliver the change our country needs.

Every Liberal Democrat MP will be a strong local champion for their community standing up for the NHS and care. Whether you voted for us or not, we will work day in and day out and we will not let you down.

He also pointed out that if the Liberal Democrat make 29 gains, bringing them to 37 seats, this would be the highest number of seats gained by the party at a General Election since 1923.

If the exit poll is accurate then we could smash that.

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There’s already one new Liberal Democrat Parliamentarian tonight…

Congratulations to Caroline Pidgeon, our recently retired Leader of the Liberal Democrats on the London Assembly, who has been appointed to the House of Lords in the Dissolution Honours List.

Responding to the announcement, Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said:

Caroline Pidgeon is a fantastic Liberal Democrat and has been an incredible public servant for more than a quarter of a century. She has a brilliant track record of fighting for better public services, from policing to public transport.

I am delighted to welcome Caroline to Parliament to fight for a fair deal for the British people.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE …

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That exit poll

So – the prediction is 61 Lib Dem MPs!

That is a rise of 53 on the 2019 result!!!

Just brilliant.

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It’s almost all over

So how has polling day been for you? I am sure I am not the only person who got sunburnt while telling at a polling station.

Talking of which, did anyone mention dogs at polling stations? I had a conversation with this beautiful Pyrenean Mountain Dog while taking numbers.

We now wait for the exit polls, which have been pretty accurate in previous elections. To keep you entertained I thought I might remind you of what happened to a previous editor of Lib Dem Voice, Stephen Tall, back in 2015.

You may have noticed that the members of the Lib Dem Voice team have been reticent to make predictions about how many seats we will win. That’s because we don’t want to follow in Stephen’s footsteps – quite literally.

He pledged to run naked down Whitehall if the party gained fewer than 20 seats in the General Election in 2015.  Here is a reminder of what happened next…

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Go for it!

Embed from Getty Images

Our warmest wishes go to everyone out campaigning today.

If you are a candidate realistically hoping that you will be an MP tomorrow, then go for it (and stop reading political blogs for the time being!).

If you are a candidate with little chance of winning, then keep cheerful – we owe you a huge thank you for giving so much to this campaign and keeping the Lib Dem diamonds bright.

If you are an activist or supporter who will be spending the day door knocking, delivering, telling or doing those all vital back room tasks, then you are the real heroes of this campaign. Enjoy the day, and be pleased that you have participated in an election that we will be talking about for many years to come.

You won’t be hearing much from the Lib Dem Voice team during the day today – we are all a bit busy. But we will be offering news and commentary throughout the night so do check in after 10pm and maybe share stories with us at [email protected].

We should also remember the many council by-elections taking place today as well. The news about those contests may get buried under the national news, but please let us know and we will highlight what we can.

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It’s Eve of Poll. How are you going to help Lib Dems win tomorrow?

It’s hard to believe that it’s 6 weeks since Rishi Sunak stood in the rain in Downing Street to fire the starting gun to the General Election campaign.

Since then, there hasn’t been much movement in the polls, apart from a few points up for us, sparked by the brilliant, positive, incredible images and messages coming from our leader. What a time to come in to the form of your life, Ed Davey!

This party has fought our best campaign for years at every possible level. Our media spokespeople have been amazing. Ed has shown in the debates, Question Times and interviews that there is a huge amount of substance behind the style. He has tackled tough questions head on, with honesty and humility.

It’s all getting real now. Tomorrow, people in our target seats will have to clear a path through their Lib Dem leaflets to their door and go out to vote. Some will still be wrestling with their choice even as they stand in the voting booth with the pencil in hand. We need to be in their heads with our positive messages at that point. That is why it is so important that we get our eve of polls and good mornings out and knock on as many doors and make as many phone calls as possible.

And it’s why it is really really important that every single ounce of our efforts goes into seats where we are in the running.

If you need convincing of this, here’s the North East Fife result from 2017:

Stephen Gethins Scottish National Party 13,743 32.9% -8.1%
Elizabeth Riches Liberal Democrat 13,741 32.9% 1.5%
Tony Miklinski Conservative 10,088 24.1% 7.8%
Rosalind Garton Labour 4,026 9.6% 1.9%
Mike Scott-Hayward Independent 224 0.5% 0.5%

Two votes in it. Don’t let that happen again.

And even this May 97 more votes could have given us control of 3 more Councils.

What you do and where you do it on Polling day really matters. If you can’t travel, please think about making calls from home – or from holiday.

The messages that the Tories are putting out might seem bizarre to us. Their “letter from July 2044” aimed at bringing Reform voters back on board is probably the weirdest bit of literature we’ve ever seen, but we are not their target audience.

Mel Stride’s extraordinary comments this morning that you need enough Tories around to scrutinise Labour are very strange indeed. The only thing that the Tories will be capable of scrutinising over the next five years will be each other, with menaces. They are a party riven with irreconcilable differences and they will make a load of ferrets in a sack seem like the best of friends.

If you want a really good opposition to Labour, you will need a coherent, confident, capable party to keep their feet to the fire. So you obviously need lots of Liberal Democrats.

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Campaigners hold memorial for loved ones outside Conservative HQ

Yesterday, campaigners, including friend of this site Mathew Hulbert, held a vigil outside Conservative HQ to remember their loved ones who had died while waiting for emergency treatment.

You may remember that Mathew’s mum Jackie died in July 2022 after an 11 hour wait for an ambulance.  Mathew’s courage in speaking out about their ordeal since then has been incredible.

Yesterday,  he took part in this video explaining why they were there.

They also spoke to The Mirror:

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Does AI really pose a risk to democracy?

On Thursday the 27th of June, Channel 4’s Dispatches programme broadcast an episode called ‘Can AI Steal Your Vote?

The premise was that 12 undecided households were told they were going to see some social media content that parties had been working on but had not released yet. First hook being they would be told something that others did not know, instant buy-in for most people.

What they were not told was that this was an experiment to see how people could be manipulated to vote in specific way based on information they were presented with. Any experimental social scientists might question …

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Bungee jumping and Zumba – all in a day’s campaigning for Ed Davey

In this long election campaign, we’ve had Rishi Sunak deliver a never-ending stream of negativity and misery, Keir Starmer being so nervous about screwing things up that he’s coming across as walking on eggshells and Nigel Farage being as objectionable as ever.

Ed Davey’s bright and happy photo opportunities have provided a welcome contrast and attracted lots of positive comment.

Today, he decided to throw himself off a platform from a great height by way of inviting people to vote Liberal Democrat.

Watch, courtesy of Sky News:

The rationale for this:

To get the change our country needs this week and beat the Conservatives in scores of seats, I am asking people to take a leap of faith and vote for the Liberal Democrats.

A lot of people are on the cusp of doing something they’ve never done before on Thursday and voting for the Liberal Democrats, so I decided to do something I’ve never done before too.

Every vote for the Liberal Democrats is a vote to fix the NHS and care, end the sewage scandal and tackle the cost of living crisis.

Ed talked to The Guardian about the rationale for the stunts:

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ALDE Party Council, Vilnius 2024 (part 2) – a masterclass in agenda planning…

* Welcome to the second part of my report of the weekend’s ALDE Party Council. Part 1 can be found here

Having retired relatively early, I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for an early start the next morning. In truth, as I’ve noted before, Council is often a bit of a bureaucracy session, offering Council delegates an opportunity to scrutinise the work of the Bureau. I tend to the view that Council isn’t very good at that, unless something upsets them. After all, most Council delegates are there to debate ideas, not assess the value of adding €50,000 to one budget …

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Tom Arms’ World Review

United States

Unedifying train crash. That is possibly the most charitable portray of President Joe Biden’s performance in Thursday night’s debate. The 81-year-old candidate had a simple task: Don’t look old and expose Trump as the convicted felon and serial liar that he is. He failed.

The result is that Joe Biden now faces a crushing tsunami of party and public opinion to perform his final act of public service:  step aside and let a younger Democratic leader shoulder the job of preventing a dangerous demagogue from returning to the White House.

The problem is that there is no mechanism for allowing him to do so. The US constitution does not specify how presidential candidates are chosen. In fact, the founding fathers were dead set against the creation of political parties which they condemned as “factionalism.”

But human nature being what it is political parties quickly emerged and politicians hived off into camps labelled Republican, Democrat, Whig, Federalist, Nativists, Progressives…

From the early years of the 19th century until relatively modern times, the party machinery in each state would select delegates to attend a national convention where a presidential candidate would emerge from a series of knock-out ballots.

The first state primaries were not held until 1901 when Florida broke ranks with convention. Between 1901 and 1968 only twelve states held primaries which pledged their convention delegates to a particular candidate. Then came the chaos of the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention with delegates deadlocked while anti-Vietnam War demonstrators rioted outside.

To avoid a repetition of this unedifying spectacle the Democratic Party leadership decided to extend the primary system. The Republican Party followed suit. By 1992 Democrats had primaries in 40 states and Republicans in 39 and presidential conventions had been converted from a week of back-room horse trading and multiple ballots to a coronation party.

If Biden steps aside then the Democratic Party will have to revert to the pre-1968 format at its convention in (ironically) Chicago, on 19-22 August. The problem is that there are few – if any – people alive today who attended an old style nominating convention. Old rule books will need to be pulled out or archives, dusted off and studied thoroughly.

They have just over a month to prepare, and that is if Biden decides to hand in his notice today. Presidential contenders have the same time frame to start securing delegates’ support. And then, assuming all goes well on the night in Chicago, the party has only three months to unite behind a new candidate and persuade the American electorate that their choice is better than a lying convicted felon.

France

French voters troop to the polls on Sunday for the first round of parliamentary elections that are likely to open the door to the country’s far-right.

The latest opinion polls put Marine Le Pen’s National Rally well ahead with 37 percent of the vote. Not enough for the absolute majority so it will probably need to form a coalition with the Gaullist Les Republicains (eight percent) and some of the smaller parties (five percent). President Macron’s centrist Ensemble Alliance Renaissance lags far behind at 19.6 percent.

But a huge fly in the French political ointment is the 29 percent who say they will vote for the far-left New Popular Front led by former Trotskyist Jean-Luc Melenchon. It appears that the unpalatable choice for French voters is between the extremes of left and right.

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Observations of an Expat: Putin’s War Conundrum

Putin can’t afford to stop fighting. To do so would mean either crashing the economy or handing it over to the Chinese. But then the Chinese might end up controlling it anyway.

Russia is now a war economy. Six percent of GDP and 40 percent of the government budget is spent on “special operations” In Ukraine. Millions are employed at top dollar jobs in armaments factories that have sprung up over the past two years.

The lives of Russian soldiers have been commoditised. Families with a dead son receive $53,800. An injured son costs Putin’s Treasury $32,280. It is estimated that so far the war has cost $18 billion in compensation alone.

War is the most financially unproductive activity known to mankind. With what it costs to build a missile you can construct a building which can be used as a school to educate future generations or a factory to produce goods for export. When the missile blow up it is gone. And so is the building which it blew up and the people who can rebuild it.

But in the short-term war can be good for the economy. That is the case in Russia today. Putin was recently able to boast that at 2.6 percent, the Russian economy was growing faster than all the other European economies combined. But that growth must be set against inflation of seven percent – and rising – and interest rates at an unsustainable 16 percent in an effort to prevent runaway inflation.

Sanctions have contributed to the boom economy by forcing Russians to develop home grown alternatives, increase imports from Asian friends and the Global South, and/or pay inflated prices for Western goods imported through third-party intermediaries such as Turkey, the United Arab Emirates or Hong Kong. The growth may also be helped by the imposition of financial controls that make it impossible to take money out of the country.

That may, however, be coming to an end. President Joe Biden recently tightened the sanctions screw by expanding the powers of the US Treasury to allow it to cut off any banks in third countries deemed to be helping the Russian military-industrial complex. Turkish and UAE banks have already started cutting back on their facilities for Russian clients. Chinese banks are starting to follow suit, or insisting that all deals are made in Yuan.

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Why the Lib Dem Manifesto has lifelong learning at its heart

It will come to no surprise to anyone that I wholeheartedly believe in the power of education. So when our manifesto was released last week, I was delighted to see such a keen focus on policies to support our wonderful yet undervalued FE colleges. For far too long our colleges have been underfunded and unsupported and the Lib Dem manifesto seeks to change this alongside highlighting the importance of lifelong learning.

In the manifesto, we pledge to review of further education funding, including the option of exempting colleges from VAT. FE funding compares extremely unfavourably with both university and school funding, with the Institute for Fiscal Studies highlighting that FE and skills saw the largest spending cuts across all areas of education since 2010, with college spending per student approximately 10% lower than 2010-2011 levels and adult skills spending 23% below 2009-2010 levels. Colleges also pay VAT, unlike schools and academies, and approximately £200 million could be reinvested back into the skills system and make a key difference in colleges ability to equip young people with the skills they need to succeed.

We also pledge to create new “Lifelong Skills Grants” which will give all adults £5000 to spend on education and training throughout their lives, with the aim to increase this to £10,000 in the future when public finances allow. This offers a clear differentiation from existing and promised government commitments through their Lifelong Learning Entitlement, because it is a grant, rather than a loan. We understand that for any adult deciding whether to make the plunge into learning that there is a myriad of considerations, the time to complete their studies, and the costs if they have to give up some hours at work. Additionally, most adults with families and financial responsibilities are loathe to take on more debt, even if it will lead to a better job with better pay. These grants will give adults an investment into their futures, that will lead to better success and growth for the nation.

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Liberal Democrats winning here

Local parties and residents have been creative in the use of posters.

This splendid display is in our target seat of Esher and Walton:

Here is a novel cantilevered approach in Ed Davey’s constituency:

I like the way the diamond points to a leaflet. Thanks to Ruth Bright for this one from a home in Eastleigh:

Got a (copyright-free) photo to share? Landscape works best. Email them to [email protected] and we will add them to the post.

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This is why you need to help Lib Dem target seat candidates win

With just 8 days to go before the election, our target seat candidates need the help of every single one of us between now and polling day.

They have a huge amount to do and the more people we can talk to between now and polling day, the better the chance we have of filling up those green benches and once again being the third party in the House of Commons. That will guarantee us more media coverage and Ed will get two questions to the Prime Minister every week.

Our target seat candidates have been campaigning at high intensity for years. Some of them have completely given up other work this year to concentrate full time on their campaigns. That is a huge personal sacrifice. But it’s what we need to do to win.

The last thing we need to wake up to on 5th July  is a string of near misses. Remember in the local elections, a handful more votes would have given us control of another 3 councils.

We know that the Conservatives are going to pull out all the stops in the last few days of the campaign to stop us winning. They are very worried about the scale of the losses we can inflict. On the For the Many Podcast last Friday, broadcaster Iain Dale said:

I hear on the grapevine that Conservative candidates in Conservative seats with a majority of, say 5000 or 6000,  they are all being re-deployed to seats which have a majority of say 15,000 or 20,000.

He confirmed to co-host Jacqui Smith that this included candidates who are defending their seats.

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Look after your candidate

This is a long campaign, with more than another week to go. We’re no doubt all getting a bit tired, but keyed up by the feeling that things are going very well in our target seats, and that Ed Davey is coming across as the most human and likeable of the contending leaders. But don’t forget the strain that an election places on parliamentary candidates. All of us need to care for our candidates, make sure that they eat regularly and sleep enough, are supported by others when campaigning – and thanked and cherished when the campaign ends.

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ALDE Party Council, Vilnius 2024 (part 1) – greetings from a galaxy not far away…

Readers, please note that this is not an official report of the Council meeting last weekend, but represents my report back.

One of the things that I observed from my two years as consort to the Party President was that, if you’re chairing a potentially fractious group, especially a political one, it really helps to be able to spot potential disagreements beforehand, allowing you to have those critical conversations prior to the meeting, and to consider how best to manage the debate.

The ALDE Party isn’t entirely like that, as was demonstrated on Saturday morning.

But, having gathered in Lithuania’s charming capital, we did have more than a Council meeting to attend. My weekend started with a session sponsored by the European Liberal Forum, discussing what a liberal narrative for the next five years might look like, including our own Sal Brinton. Sal talked about our current campaign, noting that it had liberal values at its heart, offering concrete proposals to improve our public services and the environment.

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We need to be ready to take on Labour

As we likely approach an incoming Labour Government, Liberal Democrats must not waste any time before turning our campaigning firepower on Labour.

The helpful zeitgeist in this General Election has been the self-destruction of the Conservatives. However, the quiet non-aggression between ourselves and the Labour Party needs to end at 10pm on 4th July.

At times it has felt extremely lonely fighting Labour in the last decade. As the party races to win the Blue Wall, Red Wall communities are abandoned in too many areas between an awful Labour/Conservative/Reform dog fight. Liberal community politics in Labour-held cities and towns is absent except …

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