General Reflections

Many people will be disappointed with the results back in July.  This includes me of course.  Although delighted that we have 72 Lib Dem MPs in Parliament today, I hoped we could make this change happen here too.

In fact in East Wiltshire, 29,000 people did not vote for the winning candidate, with another 27,000 that didn't vote at all. This feels fundamentally wrong.

As I drove to the count I really could not predict the outcome at all, although I knew Reform would be significant, I could not work out the likely Lib Dem/Con/Labour split.

The calculated "notional vote" from 2019 with the new boundaries placed Labour narrowly second (by just a few hundred votes), and in turn this led to tactical voting recommendations for Labour, set alongside Labour's strong national polling. This tactical voting recommendation was set against recent local election results favouring the Lib Dems. We ran an excellent upbeat campaign which aimed to engage voters across this huge new constituency and we absolutely succeeded in this, but ultimately we could not counter the tactical vote recommendations, and neither could Labour capitalise on them.

The Lib Dem policy platform is bolder than Labour, braver than Labour. It is honest about dealing head on with the biggest issues we face. The need to invest more in our health and social care service and the need to be honest about the need to fix our deal with Europe, with nothing ruled out. And it's right people were given this choice. No one was standing down.

I am still here in East Wiltshire right now and will continue to campaigning for social justice, against rising nationalism, a new and better relationship with the EU, for public services that work, for the environment and always for the electoral reform we need. As far as I can, I'll be the active Lib Dem Shadow MP for East Wiltshire holding Danny Kruger and this Labour Government to account.

I have thanked all candidates for running for election and for an excellent campaign, and have offered congratulations to Danny Kruger in winning this new seat. As I said to Labour's Rob Newman as I left the count, this is democracy. I respect it.

It's a stunning win nationally for Labour, let's hope they can deliver on the change they promise. 

Thank you to everyone for all of the support and best wishes over the campaign and I am sorry that in the end we could not deliver what we all wanted.

I'll be in touch again as we go for gold at Wiltshire Council.  If you are interested in being a councillor - please let me know.