‘Who Dares, Wins’ was our catchphrase used by my campaign manager and Leader of the Sheffield Lib Dems Cllr Shaffaq Mohammed to motivate the many members and supporters who came to Mosborough to support my campaign to be elected as Councillor for the Mosborough Ward on Sheffield City Council. It was a stunning victory that saw us go from 4^th place to 1^st, increasing our vote share by a whopping 32%.

I have lived locally in Mosborough for 25 years, I’ve brought my children up here and feel passionately about the community. I have been fortunate enough to represent this area once before from 2008-2012. People remembered the hard work I put in during my time as a Councillor previously and appreciated that I knew the area. Labour, on the other hand, selected a candidate who lived 20 miles away on the opposite side of the city.

People regularly complained to me on the doorstep that they were annoyed at Labour for only turning up at election times and their choice of candidate reinforced their feelings that Labour don’t care about our area. Across the city, Sheffield Labour had become complacent and arrogant in recent times. For the last 6 years they’ve had a free pass to blame everything, including their own poor choices, on the Lib Dems in Government.

After 6 years of the same old excuse Sheffield people aren’t buying it anymore. In the absence of being anti Coalition, Labour doesn’t have anything else to offer Sheffield. Voters are becoming fed up with this negative attitude and want a positive change.

Typical of local Labour’s arrogance, they can’t understand why they’ve lost and are blaming Corbyn, or a lack of support for Corbyn. We’re not saying that the national situation with Labour never came up on the doorstep – but nowhere as much as people’s dissatisfaction with Labour locally, who they feel have let their area down.

Finally, we had a small team of amazing local volunteers and Councillors who have spent the last 10 weeks, 7 days a week in which we delivered several different leaflets to the whole ward, knocked on thousands of doors and talked to as many voters as humanly possible.

I cannot say thank you enough to my wonderful campaign manager Shaffaq – who worked tirelessly throughout. He certainly kept me going, dragging me out even in the pouring rain to knock on “just one more door.” It was never just one more door.

People recognised and appreciated this effort and it paid off. Since my victory, the hard work hasn’t stopped. Less than 20 hours after polls had closed I was back out with my loyal team with a Thank You Focus that had been penned that day. I’m also working through the mountain of casework I received.

So if you dare- work hard, talk to people about issues they care about and surround yourself a strong team – anything is possible!

* Gail Smith is the Liberal Democrat Councillor for Mosborough in Sheffield.