Lynne Featherstone on the Bromley and Chislehurst by-election result

12.54.55pm GMT Tue 4th Jul 2006

Lynne Featherstone is the Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for London

Absolutely Fabulous! Congratulations to Ben and all the team in Bromley - and to all those who piled in from across the capital to ensure that the message coming out of the by-election was a resounding question mark over the obviously not so resurgent Tories!

I gather that the Tories are kicking up a stink saying how unfair it was of the LibDems to campaign hard on Bob Neill living elsewhere (and having lots of jobs). So does it matter if a candidate is local? Where people run into trouble if they are not "local" is when they don't have other positive things to balance that out. I think this is where Bob Neill went wrong. I know Bob from our days on the GLA together - and his idea of working hard in area is, I have to say, completely different from what most Lib Dems mean by that term. So - had he been a Lib Dem representing the area on the GLA for several years, I'm sure people would have thought of him as local. But he didn't, and they didn't. And so the attacks for living elsewhere and having lots of jobs hit home.

So well done everyone - and of course - congratulations to the party's Campaigns Department who still know their stuff when it comes to winning elections! Of course a lot of the credit has gone to Chris Rennard, but we shouldn't forget the rest of team, including the agent Shaun Roberts. Indeed the person who's run my successful campaigns for council and Parliament speaks very highly of Shaun - so he must be good!