Jane Ashdown: "I can't wipe the grin off my face"

Jane Ashdown, the widow of the former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown, has been talking to Somerset Live about her delight at the general election result:

"I can't wipe the grin off my face - it means everything. I just wish Paddy was here to see it and to celebrate. 

"He would have been especially thrilled to see two Lib Dems elected locally, Adam [Dance] in Yeovil and Sarah [Dyke] in Glastonbury and Somerton. But his interest was in the whole party. He would be gobsmacked at the national result - just speechless, which didn't happen very often.

"Paddy would have been so proud of Ed (Davey) who was part of his original office team in the 1990s. He would have greatly admired the energy Ed has put into the campaign and the attention to the issues he has received by doing all those incredible things on the campaign trail. 

"Paddy used to say that if you want someone to listen to you, you've got to make sure that they know that you are listening to them. Ed has done that through the campaign and has carried the party and voters with him."

Ed Davey bets a pint of cider that one of his Somerset candidates will win a larger majority than him

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This just in from The Midsomer Norton, Radstock & District Journal with the Chew Valley & Wrington Vale Gazette:

Ms Dyke triumphed in the Somerton and Frome by-election almost a year ago, ending up with a larger parliamentary majority than her party leader.

The two made a light-hearted bet during the visit, with whoever ends up with the larger majority buying the other “a good pint of Somerset cider” once the dust has settled.

Mr Davey retained his seat at the 2019 general election with a majority of 10,489 – while Ms Dyke achieved a 29 per cent in the by-election to win David Warburton’s former seat by 11,008 votes.

When asked whether she could end up with a larger majority than Mr Davey this time around, Ms Dyke responded jovially: “I’m going to him give him a good run for his money.”

Mr Davey replied: “That’s a great competition – shall we shake on that? Whoever wins buys the other a good pint of Somerset cider.”

I'm not sure that the newspaper's headline, which I have sort of borrowed, has understood their wager correctly, but I'm not going to type out that title again.

Midsomer Norton and Radstock, it seems strange to report now, where once centres of coal mining.

And even living in an idyllic village in Somerset in the 1950s, my mother would see a bus draw up in the late afternoon and men with coal-blackened faces emerge, coming home from a shift down the mine. Coal mining went on in the county until 1973.

Sarah Dyke and Ed Davey say Save Our Cider

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During the Somerton and Frome by-election campaign Sarah Dyke and Ed Davey visited Burrow Hill Cider Farm and listened to the concerns of its owners.

It must have been a memorable visit because the two have written to Jeremy Hunt calling on him to cancel a planned tax increase on cider.

Somerset Live explains:

Somerset cider farmers are facing a crisis following the introduction of a tax hike on their products which could wipe out thousands of jobs and acres of orchards. ...

From August 1, the cider industry is facing a hammer blow tax hike, the Lib Dems say, due to the government’s reform of alcohol duty. It means an 11p hike on alcohol duty for a 500ml bottle of traditional cider with a typical 6.5% ABV.

And quotes Sarah Dyke:

"I will make it my mission to stand up for the rural communities in the West Country and give them the voice that so many of this region's Conservative MPs have completely failed to do. That starts by telling the Chancellor that if he cares about the cider industry here in the West of England, he must get rid of this damaging levy."

The Joy of Six 1148

Amy Taylor reminds us that banks have been denying people accounts for years: "For my client, there was no accusation of fraud, no prosecution, and no knowledge of any fraud, just a registered possibility of risk, which left her without banking facilities at an extremely vulnerable point in her life. No amount of pleading or explaining her situation worked. The banks turned her away."

Sarah Dyke the 35th woman elected to Westminster under the Liberal or Liberal Democrat banner. Stephen Williams lists them all, and adds the women who have been elected to national parliaments and the European Parliament.

Danny Finkelstein on the rise of RFK Jr: "His presidential campaign is highly unlikely to be successful, and he won’t be the Democratic nominee, but he is doing better than many thought he would, because conspiracy theorists can be found on the left as well as the right. And everywhere they are found, they are a danger to Jews."

 

"For reasons that have never been clear to me, my mother’s money ran out after one year and, at age 4½, I set off on my own. I headed south, sometimes living in the streets, sometimes joining gangs of other homeless children, sometimes living in orphanages, and most of the time being hungry. My recollections of those four years are vivid but not continuous, rather like a series of snapshots. Some of them are brutal beyond description, others more palatable." Mario Capecchi, a Nobel Prize winner in the physiology of medicine, recalls his extraordinary wartime childhood.

Ian Mansfield shows that Belsize Park was home to many important figures in the Modernist movement in British art.

"Jonson’s statement concerning Shakespeare’s alleged ignorance of Greek and Latin might be the single most misunderstood and misinterpreted line of English poetry ever written: it means the opposite of what most people think it means." Tom Moran argues that William Shakespeare knew Classsical languages far better than we imagine. 

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Sarah Dyke is battling the forces of darkness

Marcus Trescothick retired in 2019 after a remarkable 25-year career with Somerset and England. But when I first mentioned the Well-Behaved Orphans' summer holiday in the pages of Liberator, he was a 14-year-old playing alongside his father for the Keynsham club in Bristol. In those days the WBOs went to a different Cornish resort: Trebilcock Bay.

A prize (in a very real sense) for the first Liberal England reader to tell me where that name came from.

Anyway, this entry brings us to the end of another week with Lord Bonkers. I see the old boy was right about Somerton and Frome.

Monday

Soon it will be high summer and time to take the Well-Behaved Orphans on their annual holiday at Trescothick Bay in Cornwall, but before I see to that happy duty I have another to fulfil: a whistle-stop tour of current by-elections.  First Selby, where a contest has been called following the resignation of one Nigel Adams – I know no more about him than you do. Then it will be off to Uxbridge, where I am told the locals are still celebrating the departure of Boris Johnson, before I call in at Somerton and Frome. Here our own Sarah Dyke is battling the forces of darkness. With a little strategic advice and practical help from you diarist, I fully expect her to triumph.

Finally, I shall hang my hat in Mid Bedfordshire, where a by-election has long been promised but has yet to materialise because the aforementioned Dorries refuses to make good her solemn oath to resign. If she does finally cop for the Chiltern Hundreds, then whichever Conservative is selected will face the unhappy task of defending their party’s widely disliked, at least in Bedfordshire, ‘Do Your Number Twos in the Great Ouse’ campaign.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• The other animals would lay their disputes before the kangaroos
• One of Violent Bonham Carter’s boys
• Ofwat, Ofgem, Ofthis, Ofthat
• Charabanc trips to the coast have been booked
• Sporting on its shore in animal skins
• Lynched during the lunch interval

Huge landslides in Somerset and Dorset last night

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News from Dorset Live:

Walkers and beachgoers are being warned of the dangers of straying too close to cliff faces after a vast overnight landslip on the coast of Dorset. Many thousands of tonnes of material has collapsed onto the beach at Seatown.

The privately owned beach is a favourite with anglers, fossil hunters and walkers. The huge landslip occurred overnight and Dorset Fire and Rescue Service have urged visitors to the area to take extra care.

Meanwhile, over the county boundary in Somerset, Sarah Dyke won back Somerton and Frome for the Liberal Democrats. Congratulations to Sarah and all who were involved in the campaign.

The seat was previously held for the party between 1997 and 2015 by David Heath.

A Lib Dem revival on this scale in a West Country seat suggests that being a Leaver is not longer central to so many voters sense of political identity.

Brexit has delivered none of the benefits its proponents forecast, and even in 2019, I suspect many heard Boris Johnson's "Get Brexit done" as "Make Brexit go away" and voted Conservative in the hope they would stop hearing so much about it.

Inevitably they were disappointed.

Britain Elects has tweeted the figures:

Sarah Dyke: "I’ve been dealing with a lot of David Warburton’s casework over the last year"

Peter Walker has been to Somerton and Frome for the Guardian and talked to the Liberal Democrat candidate:

Sarah Dyke sometimes feels as if she gets treated like the de facto local MP already.

"I've been dealing with a lot of David Warburton’s casework over the last year because people haven’t known where to go," Dyke says of the Conservative incumbent, who resigned last month after a parliamentary investigation into allegations of harassment and drug use. ...

"Everybody that I’ve spoken to has said they've tried to email him, they've tried to write to him, they've tried to knock on his office door, and every single route came up with a blank," Dyke says. "So they turned to me."

Meanwhile the Conservative candidate Faye Purbick claims that Warburton and his record are not a prime concern for voters:

"It’s not a conversation I’ve been having with people.”

This reminds me of Peter May's time as chairman of the England cricket selectors. A journalist put it to him that some people thought he was out of touch. His reply? 

"I've not heard that."

There's still plenty of work to do in Somerton and Frome before the polls close on Thursday night. The Lib Dems' by-election headquarters is at Unit 3, Station Approach, Frome BA11 1RE.

Helpers coming from west of Frome are asked to go to Hilton's, Duck's Hill, Huish Episcopi, TA10 9EN.

All roads lead to Frome: How to help Sarah Dyke in the by-election

Frome wasn't built in a day. Nevertheless, Somerset Live reports that the Liberal Democrats immediately got stuck in to the Somerton and Frome by-election.

Less than a week into the campaign, the party has set up their main shop in Frome, with satellite hubs across the constituency.

Activists from across the country gathered to hear a rallying speech from Sarah Dyke and Tiverton and Honiton by-election winner Richard Foord MP.

The Liberal Democrats overturned the Conservative’s 24,239 majority with Richard Foord’s win. His victory continued the party’s winning streak in rural blue wall seats, adding to previous by-election success in Chesham & Amersham and North Shropshire.

In Somerset, Sarah Dyke has seen similar success. During last May’s local elections, she beat the man in charge of the Conservative party's 'Lib Dem unit.' Overall, the party won 61 seats and took control of the council from the Conservatives.

But, of course, Sarah needs as much help as possible from Lib Dem supporters and members. So until polling day on 20 July, all roads (and railways) lead to Frome.

The Lib Dems' by-election headquarters is at Unit 3, Station Approach, Frome BA11 1RE.

Helpers coming from west of Frome are asked to go to 1 Parrett Close, Langport TA10 9PD.