LOCAL Liberal Democrats made a significant contribution to the party’s staggering success in the recent parliamentary by election triumph at Tiverton and Honiton.

I visited six times and many others did likewise, none more so than our own prospective parliamentary candidate, Martin Wrigley, who was largely responsible for the vast number of posters seen in towns and villages throughout the constituency, that helped create the positive image of widespread support and potential victory.

The size of victory surprised me. While it became increasingly obvious as the campaign progressed that the Lib Dem support was growing, it would take a record breaking swing to achieve this astonishing breakthrough.

Tiverton and Honiton yesterday, Newton Abbot tomorrow?

Why did it happen and what might the parties learn?

Conservative supporters claim that it was nothing more than a protest vote, and of course there is some truth in that. It is offered as though there was something wrong in protesting!

We have every right and every reason to be protesting right now. Indeed, isn’t every vote at every election to some degree a protest?

I don’t believe too many vote positively for the policies of a given party. That is a sadness and regrettable, but political change comes when a sufficient number of residents are disenchanted in sufficient numbers to change their normal voting pattern.

Under our totally unsatisfactory voting system, all too often it requires a ‘tactical’ vote to be cast for the least bad of those available. Ie not a positive vote in favour of a party and it’s policies, but against the awful incumbent and therefore in favour of the one most likely to beat the despised party.

Here in the rural South West the anti Conservative vote has traditional gone to the Liberal, or more recently Liberal Democrat party. The vote on June 23rd saw a very positive restatement of that position, and certainly raised hopes amongst Lib Dems of significant electoral success at the next General Election.

If the Tiverton vote was repeated at the next general election the Conservatives would be left with a mere 30 something seats nationwide… that won’t be the case of course!

However, there are a number of seats here in the south west which will be targets for the party…Torbay; North Devon; St Ives; Yeovil, and numerous others, including Newton Abbot, which was a Lib Dem hold with Richard Younger Ross not so long ago.

The result in Tiverton (and the other loss by the Conservative Government on the night at Wakefield, where Labour won) required informed voting, where those wanting to rid the country of this most rotten of Prime Ministers and inept Governments, opted for the party most likely to achieve that end, which proved right.

No official pact has taken place between the parties, but clearly the electorate are aware of the potential outcome of tactical voting. One of the consequences of course is that the parties not seen as likely to beat the incumbent lose badly.

In Wakefield the LD candidate lost his deposit, and that ignominy was the fate of the Labour candidate (and several others) here in Devon. I am not in favour of any official electoral pacts between parties, where seats are ‘carved up’ and allocated to one party or another, partly because to do so is not only very difficult and divisive (I was involved in that process back in the 80’s when the SDP merged with the LDs ) but it undermines democracy and deprives activists of the right to work for and vote for their belief structure.

(I accept there is potentially a huge debate here, but space forbids)