John Whitehouse

Despite my personal intervention in the Crewe & Nantwich by-election - i.e. spending a day pounding pavements there on Wednesday - I’m afraid the Lib Dems didn’t do as well as we hoped, suffering the classic “third party squeeze” on our vote. Travelling around the constituency it was clear that the Conservatives had won the poster battle, and this was reflected in the votes cast on the day.

A pity - we had an excellent candidate, but it seems that voters were intent on giving Gordon Brown a “kicking”, and had decided that the best way to do this was to vote Tory. By-elections always magnify trends, and this time it didn’t favour us. The next one (Henley), however, may be very different!