The Liberal Democrats have taken a record number of seats for the party in the general election. Ed Davey’s party has ousted four cabinet ministers and denied the Tories success in constituencies once held by former prime ministers David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson. With 641 results declared, the Lib Dems’ tally stood at 71, beating the party’s previous record of 62 under Charles Kennedy’s leadership in 2005. In early results, the Lib Dems ousted Gillian Keegan, the education secretary – her Chichester seat had a 21,500 majority in 2019 and had been held by the Conservatives for a century – and Alex Chalk, the justice secretary.
By Friday morning, the party had won 71 seats, with only a handful to be declared making it their highest total since 1923, when they were just the Liberal party led by Herbert Asquith. Speaking after winning his Kingston and Surbiton seat again by more than 17,000 votes, Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, said many voters had turned to his party for the first time to be their “champions”. Davey, who threw himself into a series of picture-friendly stunts in the election campaign, said: “Well, we’ve heard you – loud and clear. We’ve put your concerns at the heart of our campaign.” Davey’s decision to focus resources on a defined number of target seats, the bulk of them held by the Conservatives, seemed to have paid off, even though they failed to oust Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, in his Surrey seat, falling short by fewer than 1,000 votes. Other usually ultra-safe Conservative seats did fall, including Stratford-on-Avon – held in the last election by Nadhim Zahawi with a majority of close to 20,000 – Henley, once represented by Boris Johnson, Surrey Heath, formerly Michael Gove’s constituency, and the new seat of Bicester and Woodstock.
In a tweet posted shortly after the exit poll emerged at 10pm on Thursday, Davey also suggested the party’s tally could rise beyond 62. “The Liberal Democrats are on course for our best results in a century, thanks to our positive campaign with health and care at its heart,” he said. “I am humbled by the millions of people who backed us to both kick the Conservatives out of power and deliver the change our country needs.” Davey celebrated the results by dancing and singing to Sweet Caroline with party activists at an event in central London. Davey seized media attention during the election campaign with stunts including a bungee jump, falling off a paddleboard and going down a water slide. He and the party insisted that all these events were tied into policies and helped get their ideas across.
Daisy Cooper, the party’s deputy leader, said the tactics appeared to have paid off. “We’ve said time and again that while we don’t take ourselves that seriously, we do take our politics very seriously,” she told BBC News. “And with every single one of those stunts, there was a very serious message about our plans.” The result is a vindication of Davey’s decision to focus ruthlessly on a series of target seats, many in the south and south-west of England, and some in Scotland. In 2019 under Jo Swinson, the party won 12% of the vote, but it was spread around the country, reducing the number of seats won. After Davey took over the leadership, he launched an inquest into the election from which the new strategy emerged. A key part of the success came in so-called “blue wall” seats – affluent commuter belt constituencies around London or other cities where more moderate Tory voters were becoming exasperated with the governments of Boris Johnson and then Liz Truss. In June 2021, the Lib Dems pulled off an extraordinary byelection win in the Buckinghamshire constituency of Chesham and Amersham, overturning a 16,000 Conservative majority to take the seat. This spearheaded a wave of Lib Dem byelection wins over the Tories, which also took in more rural seats such as North Shropshire. The party began the election campaign with a target list of about 50 seats, but this was expanded as previously safe Conservative seats came into view.