Sarah Medley compared the experience of waking up on Friday morning as one of a new batch of Liberal Democrat councillors with how she felt just under three years ago on learning that Britain had voted for Brexit.
“My husband and I stayed up late enough to see that it was going leave’s way but it was still a shock when we got up, and then there was obviously a huge amount of dejection when I met people later on,” said the 27-year-old, a scientist working alongside many Europeans at the UK’s national fusion research laboratory in the Oxfordshire town of Culham.
Prompted to take an interest in active politics for the first time in her life she joined the Lib Dems two days after the referendum result. On Thursday night she was part of a Lib Dem slate that overturned a 20-seat Tory majority to take the Vale of White Horse district council from the Conservatives for the first time since 2007 – one of many of the party’s spectacular local election results.
Elected alongside her in the semi-rural ward Blewbury and Harwell was another first-time Lib Dem councillor from a science background, the research chemist Hayleigh Gascoigne.
The backgrounds of both reflect one of the factors at work in this part of Oxfordshire, in some ways typical of Tory heartlands but also home to large numbers of typically remain-voting professionals working in science industry clusters, university staff in the region and also citizens of other EU states.
Unlike in some other parts of the country, the result was also the product of collaboration between local Lib Dems and Greens. It included activists from both parties running a joint campaign in one ward and literature being distributed advocating a ‘half green – half yellow’ vote in a part of the country which had recorded clear remain majorities in 2016.
“There is an awful lot of common ground between us but there was a very good rapport between activists, and you do have to leave it to decide on a ward-by-ward basis,” said Cheryl Briggs, who had stood aside in the last general election as the Green candidate in order to help the Lib Dems’ Layla Moran get elected as the local MP, but on Thursday night was helped to become the first Green councillor on the Vale of White Horse district council.
As a bleary-eyed Briggs spoke, shell-shocked defeated Conservatives filed in behind her to the count centre just outside the market town of Abingdon for the results of town and parish elections, which were also expected to bring bad news for the Tories.
Among the vanquished Tory councillors was Mike Badcock, who had been a local representative for 36 years but lost his seat on the district council in a result which he largely blamed on Brexit.
“The Europeans came out to vote, and they were encouraged to do so. But we also found ballot papers with comments written on them about Brexit and I think that a lot of people also voted Liberal Democrat as a protest vote, even though they had voted leave,” said Badcock, whose daughter Alice also lost her seat.
The Liberal Democrats also became the largest party on neighbouring South Oxfordshire District Council, which previously had an 18-seat Tory majority, where the Greens took six seats.
The carnage continued into Friday as results from Abingdon Town Council saw the Conservatives lose all of their 10 seats. The town now has 18 Liberal Democrat councillors and one green.
In Abingdon, there was some satisfaction at the night’s results among congregants of the town’s ancient St Nicolas’s church. A Conservative-voting woman who gave her name as “Mrs Campbell” insisted that much of the Lib Dem vote had come from fellow Conservatives who would return to the fold come the general election.
Beside her, Tony Richmond, 75, a retired journalist and civil servant shook his head.
“I’m pleased that the Lib Dems have done well because they’re currently the only party that are really standing up in a very visible way against Brexit and Layla Moran has been part of that effort. It’s very heartening.”
