Hampshire CC, Chandler’s Ford- 22nd October 2015

It's interesting to note that UKIP were expecting to do well and said in my hearing while I was telling that they'd be satisfied with a good second place. Instead, their vote collapsed. They'd even had the gall to circulate a leaflet proclaiming 'Only UKIP can defeat the Tories in C/Ford!' when in the last election they were third and 500 behind us. Now they're still third and 1000 behind us, so pick the bones out of that! It appears that most of their former voters defected back to the Tories when the came, which handily accounts for the increase in the Tory vote. In view of the situation nationally I'm not surprised that we didn't win, but we strengthened out resources on the ground in the course of the campaign and achieved a modest increase in votes. We saw Labour off here in 1968 when I was the Liberal agent, and now we've seen off UKIP as a rival when it comes to taking on the Tories. We are going to live in what I believe a Chinese proverb refers to as 'interesting times'. To which my reply is, 'Bring 'em on!'