We have, because Nick Harvey won North Devon back from the Tories in 1992 and held it until the debacle of 2015.
But there were promising signs even before Nick was elected.
I am reminded of one of the first pieces I ever wrote for Liberal Democrat News - a review of the register of MPs' interests, which appeared in the edition of 17 May 1996.
It was all a long time ago: Alex Carlile was still an MP and still a Liberal Democrat.
I wrote of him:
Alex Carlile is another hard-working member, including among his interests membership of the board of the British Field Sports Society and the loan of a fax machine from the Liberal Democrat Country Forum.
On second thoughts, that may be a misprint for "fox machine" - an experimental robot which Mr Carlile and his friends pursue across the hills of the Welsh Border, enjoying cruelty-free hunting. Let us hope so.But the point of this post and mention of Rinka lies in the the entry for Emma Nicholson, who was still an MP and still a Liberal Democrat then too:
She supplies a long and immensely impressive list of all the good causes with which she is involved - everything from the Women's Engineering Society to the Child Psychotherapy Trust.
But she holds one post which stands out even above these. Emma is a vice-patron of the North West Devon Canine Association.
I don't know about you, but I suspect that some of her recent Liberal predecessors in the region were not invited to serve in this capacity.
Later. Because I was tired last night I left out the main point of this post. That was to congratulate Kirsten Johnson on being selected as the new Lib Dem PPC for North Devon.
Perhaps you should be asking if the Daily Mirror journalist who was rumoured to be first on the scene (before any of the participants) whether the newspaper has been forgiven for not intervening to prevent the attack in the first place?
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