Tag Archives: Happy New Year

Not going to lie, I’m still reeling from the rollercoaster we’ve been on this year. The physical exhaustion of the general election campaign is slowly diminishing, but, for me, the emotional effect is still weighing heavy.

In January 2019, we were starting to make a tiny step forward and were in double figures in the polls most of the time. We had 12 MPs who were doing their damnedest to make sure we didn’t leave the EU on 29th March. Jo Swinson was just about to come back to full time work after her maternity leave.

We had high hopes that we might gain 300 or so seats on a good night in the local elections in May.

We all kind of dreaded Theresa May getting her Withdrawal Agreement through with the help of Labour votes.

And then she didn’t. And a million people at least took to the streets to call for a People’s Vote.

We gained over 700 councillors o that first Thursday in May. Our success was a springboard into a vibrant and uncompromising European election campaign where our Bollocks to Brexit message resonated.  Although the Brexit party won more seats, more votes were cast for remain parties and the Liberal Democrats won an unprecedented 16 MEPs, 20.3% and 3.3 million votes. Between them, the Conservatives and Labour Party didn’t get much more than that.

For a time, we thought sense would  prevail after all and we might be able to stop Brexit.

We had a friendly and uplifting leadership contest between Jo Swinson and Ed Davey and, to our surprise, our poll ratings hovered around the 20% mark.

Our parliamentary ranks swelled as, first, Chuka Umunna joined us in June and Sarah Wollaston, Angela Smith, Phillip Lee, Luciana Berger, Sam Gyimah, Antoinette Sandbach followed suit.

In the Summer, we’d decamped to the gorgeous Welsh constituency of Brecon and Radnorshire where a by-election had been called following a successful recall of the Conservative MP. We were thrilled when, in the early hours of 2nd August, Welsh Leader Jane Dodds triumphed.

We had a brilliant new leader, we had maintained our high poll rating and, in fact, there were four parties in the 20% range.

As we end the year after a brutal general election which saw us one seat down from our 2017 total and minus a brilliant leader, we have to ask where it all went wrong. There will be a formal review of the General Election – this takes place after every election – and all the decisions we took, from deciding to vote for the election to the targeting decisions we made during the campaign will be subject to scrutiny. Did we deliver enough/too many leaflets? Did we sell ourselves well enough?