Young people are the life and the soul of the Liberal Democrats.

Having long forgiven the party over tuition fees, young people played a pivotal role in the party’s successes in the General Election. We in the Young Liberals have built a reputation over time for being committed campaigners and enthusiastic door-knockers, but even we were amazed at quite how much young people across the party poured their hearts and souls into this election. We have come leaps and bounds from where we were in 2019. Since then, the Young Liberals have professionalised, built capacity and communities across states and regions, and worked together more effectively to ensure that we could maximise our impact in the General Election.  As members, volunteers, party staff, candidates, federal committee members, state executive members, and across all levels of the party, Young Liberals led the way during the General Election.

We had the pleasure of being at the forefront of the campaign. The YL Development Officer fed back to HQ where the Young Liberals were campaigning at different points in the election, helping to inform decisions about where best to organise action days and divert resources throughout the rest of the party. Young people’s commitment to the party strategy and campaigning efforts helped to lock down seats earlier in the campaign, meaning that resources could then be diverted elsewhere, ultimately helping the party to achieve the phenomenal result of 72 MPs.

Each one of us contributes to what we can achieve and what we can become as a party, and we should be nothing but proud as young people in the party for what we collectively accomplished in the General Election.

But more than our efforts on the ground, Young Liberals helped to shape the narrative and the policy offer of the Liberal Democrats in this election. Firstly, it was the Young Liberals who championed carers a few years ago, before it became a key piece of the party’s identity under Ed Davey’s leadership.

Moreover, at autumn conference, Young Liberals worked with the Lambeth local party to pass a policy on ending period poverty. The result is that we were the only major political party to even mention periods in our manifesto. We as a party are leading the way on this issue.

Young women in the party also brought a motion to autumn conference on fast fashion, and as a result the manifesto included a policy on a move to a circular economy.

And perhaps most importantly to a lot of members in the party, we successfully campaigned to get the 380,000 housing target in the manifesto – a policy with the ambition required to tackle the housing crisis locking so many young people out of home ownership.

We have a lot to look forward to in the next Parliament. The Labour Government is already planning to implement Young Liberals policy, set to scrap age bands on minimum wage. Furthermore, we have a Young Liberals MP, Joshua Reynolds, and we can’t wait to see what he achieves for his community and in Parliament.

So when we look forward to what’s next for the Young Liberals, we shouldn’t limit our ambitions for what we can achieve in the next Parliament, not just within the party, but in shaping the agenda in UK politics as a whole and making a real difference to people’s lives.

We will be at the forefront of holding the Labour Party to account, not least on trans rights, and shaping our party’s identity and policies in the next Parliament. We will be keeping up the hard work to secure the 72 seats we won at the beginning of July. We will be pushing the party to do better on diversity and to nurture present and future generations of councillors, MPs, party staff, and volunteers who contribute to the party in a huge variety of ways.

But most importantly, we in the Young Liberals will never take for granted those throughout the party who support us and who amplify our voices, who give us the opportunities to make an impact in the way that we can today. For those of you who continue to have our backs, thank you.

If you would like to support the Young Liberals in continuing to shape the party, champion young people, and get young members elected, please do consider donating to the Young Liberals.

* Janey Little is vice chair of Lib Dem Women