Thread by @lewis_goodall

NEW: If you’re waking up you’ve missed a truly sensational by election result.

Lib Dems GAIN Chesham and Amersham. It’s been Conservative since 1974. It had a Tory majority of 16000+. Now a Lib Dem maj of *8028*.

That’s a swing to the Lib Dems of 25.2%.

Result in full

Lib Dem: 56.7% (+30.4)
Conservative: 35.5% (-19.9)
Green: 3.9% (-1.6)
Lab: 1.6% (-11.2)

Loads of tactical voting- Labour vote collapses in favour of Lib Dems. But also clearly huge Tory-LD transference.

The word sensational is overused in elections but I’m struggling to think of a more staggering one than this. When I say this has been Tory since 1974 that’s because the seat was created in 1974. In one way or another, the seat has basically been Tory since universal suffrage.

I think it may be the first time Buckinghamshire has had a non-Conservative MP since 1922. This was a seat which is smack bang in the middle of the “blue wall”. In many ways it’s a quintessential Conservative seat. Prosperous, southern, genteel.

This is a seat which is far more Conservative than Hartlepool was left Labour. There the maj had been dwindling for years.

Bear in mind this has happened when the government is polling extremely well, in the middle of a vaccine bounce.

As I reported earlier in the week the Lib Dems had been feeling more and more bullish about their prospects. But the size of this far exceeded their expectations.

As I said, they’ve done it by campaigning on a) HS2 b) Development Housing c) sense of Conservative southern neglect

https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1405165376858640384

Am going to sleep so won’t go through all implications- but this will alter politics on all of those issues. Tory MPs in the south had already been uneasy on all these subjects, saying govt, in chasing a reconfiguring electoral geography, was in danger of neglecting core support

This will give those MPs enormous ballast on each of these issues. It suggests that the Conservatives *might* not be able to continue to expand their coalition indefinitely, that something starts to swing back the other way.

Of course the government will day that this is...

...a classic midterm protest vote and they’ll win the seat back come a general election (plausible). They’ll say the size of the maj actually gives credibility to that view. Again plausible. But MPs are nervous creatures and the mere prospect of a serious southern LD revival...

...will be enough to change the alchemy of politics. People forget now a) how dramatically competitive the Lib Dems used to in much of the south east (hence Jeremy Bunt talking of his winning his marginal south east Surrey seat in the 2000s) and b) how many second...

...place finishes they had in 2019, even though was a v poor result for them overall.

This will also embolden those who argue for some kind of progressive alliance, achieved partly as it was off the back of a lot of tactical voting.

But the other party this raises questions for is Labour. Question is if the Lib Dems can pull off a result like this, why is Starmer not doing better? It suggests it is possible to overcome the vaccine and popularity of Boris Johnson? There’s a few answers to that.

Either A) there’s something peculiar about Chesham and Amersham and this is an almost sui generis result B) this is further proof of realignment.

But if it is B that points to the mixed picture for Labour. On the one hand it’s great news for them that Lib Dems might pick up seats from Cons in parts of the south of England, in places where they’re not competitive. They need a LD revival to have a hope.

.On other hand they’re losing seats in north to the Conservatives but not necessarily picking them up themselves in the south, as I’ve said before it’s an asymmetric and messy realignment. It also implies they may continue to lose Northern seats.

Remember, there were lots of places in the south the Conservatives held up very well in the locals. But this does build on some of the “blue wall” cracks we saw then. It is going to colour the psychology of politics over the next months.

In particular the politics of housing and development just got much more turbulent. As I say, pressure on government to rethink will be very significant.

Just when you thought things couldn’t get more interesting.

Lib Dem source: “I'm actually genuinely stunned. I thought we could win it by a few hundred but this is insane.”

Oh and finally this is enormous for @EdwardJDavey’s personal credibility. Enhances him within and without of the party enormously. Had received a lot of criticism for making little impact. That will go and his position safe until the next general election. He visited C&A 16 times

Or to cut a long story short