![]() The ballot boxes began arriving quickly, and for the first hour-and-a-half everything felt normal, with verifications being undertaken peacefully and my fellow journalists filling up on tea and biscuits ahead of what we thought would be a long night. There were no formal exit polls, and a quick scan of Twitter gave the same message for every one of the main parties - 'we're doing really well, vote for me, we're going to win'. When I arrived at the Royal Bath and West Showground just before the polls closed, the atmosphere was one of tempered excitement. It wasn't inevitable - until it happened. I said it would be too close to call, less than a thousand votes in it. But no-one - least of all me - could have predicted the unprecedented scale of their victory in the early hours of Friday morning. Receive your Western Morning News newsletter direct to your email inbox every weekday (no need to come here to read it) by signing up hereįollowing their triumphs in Chesham and Amerham, North Shropshire and most recently Tiverton and Honiton, there was in some corners a sense of inevitability that they would throw everything they had at the Somerton and Frome contest and were the favourites to win. The Lib Dems under Sir Ed Davey have gone from a footnote to front-page news, in no small part due to a series of extraordinary by-election victories in traditional Tory seats. A lot has changed since then, and especially since the last general election in 2019. Tuition fees had become the party's Iraq War - a permanent black mark against their record, prompting some voters to never trust them again - and David Warburton rode that resentment to turn the seat into one of the safest in the country. Few had predicted that the Lib Dems would suffer such a devastating series of losses, but once the dominoes began to fall, it was clear they were bearing the brunt of public ill feeling towards the coalition government. Taylor's words seemed apt nearly ten years ago as the 'blue wave' swept across the south west, with the Liberal Democrats' traditional heartlands being all but wiped out as David Cameron's pre-Brexit Conservatives emerged with a slender majority in 2015. Taylor once remarked: "Nothing is inevitable, until it happens." ![]()
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