Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Victory gives LibDems hope for revival in West
LEADING Liberal Democrats in the West hailed Sarah Green’s massive victory in the Chesham and Amersham by-election and hoped it would give the party the impetus to stage a revival in the region.
The upset in a seat that had returned Tory MPs for almost 100 years in a row is viewed as a blow to Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his party in its heartlands.
In the 1990s and early 2000s the Liberal Democrats became a huge factor in West Country politics, to the extent that the party returned 18 MPs to Westminster from the South West in 2005 and 15 in 2010.
In Somerset alone it had MPs win seats such as Yeovil, Taunton, Somerton and Frome, Wells and Weston-super-Mare; it won seats in Bristol, in Chippenham in Wiltshire and in Gloucestershire it claimed seats such as Cheltenham and Thornbury and Yate. But support ebbed away after its MPs formed a coalition government with the Conservatives in 2010 under Nick Clegg.
At the last General Election in 2019 the region’s only LibDem MP was Wera Hobhouse in Bath.
Yesterday though she cheered the stunning victory in Chesham and Amersham, saying it gave her renewed hope for this region.
She said: “We LibDems are thrilled with our victory in Chesham and Amersham, which is a testament to
the hard work of our new MP Sarah Green, local activists and all of us from around the country who turned out in force to listen to residents on the doorstep. We had a very warm welcome from residents who told us that they feel they have been neglected and ignored by the Conservatives, especially on the Government’s planning reforms.
“I am optimistic about our party’s future in the South West. The LibDems are passionate about local democracy and local decision-making, we are the best at community activism and we are inveterate campaigners. As the Government’s gross mishandling of the Covid response and of Brexit becomes more apparent, I believe that more and more voters will realise that the Conservatives have let our country down and will look to the LibDems to stand up for them.”
Max Wilkinson, who was fewer than 1,000 votes behind Tory MP Alex Chalk at the 2019 General Election, is the Liberal Democrat parliamentary spokesperson for Cheltenham.
The Gloucestershire town, where the LibDems control the borough council, is number five on the party’s target list of seats to regain at the next General Election and Mr Wilkinson said activists and campaigners will be spurred on by the by-election result.
He said: “There has been a lot of talk in the South of England of a Blue Wall and I guess Cheltenham is at the far west of that.
“I think people in Cheltenham will be heartened by the result in Chesham and Amersham.
“It proves what we already know, that it will be incredibly close between the Liberal Democrats and
Conservatives in Cheltenham at the next General Election.”
He went on to say that it was particularly heartening in Chesham and Amersham that many people who might ordinarily have voted Labour switched their vote to the Liberal Democrats to beat the Conservatives.
He added: “It also has to be said that in Chesham and Amersham there are a lot of traditional Tory voters who were really switched off by some of the things that Boris Johnson and his team, including our local MP here in Cheltenham, have been doing recently.
“What we are seeing now is Brexit unravelled.”
Councillor Paul Hodgkinson, leader of the Liberal Democrats on Gloucestershire County Council, celebrated the result on Twitter.
He said: “Incredible 8k majority for LibDems. Stunning by election comeback for the LibDems and massive blow to Tories.
“Watch out in other so-called ‘true blue’ seats!”
Translating one-off by-election success into more widespread victories at a General Election remains a challenge for the LibDems, particularly in the South West where across the region as a whole the Conservatives polled more than 52 per cent in 2019’s General Election, winning 48 seats, compared to six for Labour and one for the Lib Dems.
BORIS Johnson has admitted the Chesham and Amersham by-election was a “disappointing result” after the Liberal Democrats inflicted a severe defeat on his Conservative Party.
Liberal Democrat Sarah Green is the country’s newest MP after winning the Buckinghamshire seat, which had been a Conservative stronghold since its creation in 1974.
Sir Ed Davey said his party’s victory would “send a shockwave through British politics” while claiming the result demonstrated that the “Blue Wall” of Tory southern seats could be vulnerable.
The Prime Minister thanked defeated Tory candidate Peter Fleet and said there were “particular circumstances” at play after his party lost one of its safest seats in England.
Asked if he was neglecting voters in the South in favour of those in the North, the Prime Minister told reporters: “It was certainly a disappointing result.
“There were particular circumstances there and we are getting on with delivering our agenda for the whole country, that’s what onenation Conservatism is all about.
“We believe in uniting and levelling up within regions and across the country.”
The by-election was triggered by the death of former Cabinet minister Dame Cheryl Gillan, who took the seat with a majority of 16,233 in the 2019 general election - some 55% of the vote.
In a stunning result, Ms Green took 56.7% of the vote to secure a majority of 8,028 over the secondplaced Tories.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed told BBC Breakfast on Friday: “I think this will send a shockwave through British politics.
“Liberal Democrats have had good wins in the past, but this is our best-ever by-election victory, and if it was repeated across the South, literally dozens of Conservative seats would fall to the Liberal Democrats.
“People talked about the Red Wall in the North, but forgotten about the Blue Wall in the South, and that’s going to come tumbling down if this result is mimicked across this country.”
The Green Party came third with 1,480 votes, with Labour trailing in fourth with just 622 votes, losing the party’s deposit in the process.
Polling expert Sir John Curtice told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he made it the “worst Labour performance in any byelection” after the party took just 1.6% of the vote.
In her acceptance speech, Ms Green said: “Tonight the voice of Chesham and Amersham is unmistakable. Together we have said: ‘Enough is enough, we will be heard, and this Government will listen.’
“This campaign has shown that no matter where you live, or how supposedly safe a constituency may appear to be, if you want a Liberal Democrat member of Parliament, you can have a Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament.”
The country’s newest MP and Sir Ed celebrated the triumph at a victory rally in the constituency on Friday, where the pair stood in front of a blue wall made of plastic bricks which the Lib Dem leader then smashed with an orange hammer.