Amid the concern at what this month's local elections revealed about the concentration of the Liberal Democrat vote in the prosperous South, it's worth celebrating one of the exceptions.
As the Liverpool Echo reports:
In Sefton’s local elections last week, Labour’s seat share was reduced from 51 of 66 down to 36, while other parties and Independent candidates made significant inroads. The Liberal Democrats went into the election with nine seats on the council, but almost doubled this share to 17 on May 7, taking 15.6 per cent of the vote and only losing out in four of the seats where they stood.
That vote share sounds low, but maybe that's what successful targeting brings you in our new world of multi-party politics.
One of the victorious Lib Dem candidates spoke to the press:
Daniel Lewis, who is returning to represent Meols alongside John Dodd and Lauren Keith after previously serving as a councillor between 2014 and 2022, said: "Campaigns are always about a lot of things, but I think there were a lot of people for whom Reform represented something they really didn’t want to see.
"I think quite early on, people established that the Liberal Democrats were the best way to prevent that. So mixed with the Lib Dems in Southport having a record of working for people locally and delivering for them, a number of people said that they would be devastated if Southport became a Reform town."
Southport, it should not be forgotten, was one of the random selection of eight seats that we held amid the carnage of the 2015 general election.
If this has put you in the mood for more optimistic Lib Dem analysis of the local elections results, hurry over to Matthew Pennell's blog Return of the Liberal.
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