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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Lib Dem win in Richmond Park could change government's Brexit policy, says Farron - Politics live

Sarah Olney, the new MP for Richmond Park, and Tim Farron, the party leader, celebrating the Lib Dem win in the byelection.
Sarah Olney, the new MP for Richmond Park, and Tim Farron, the party leader, celebrating the Lib Dem win in the byelection.
Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images

Summary

  • Nick Clegg, the former Lib Dem leader, has used an article in the Evening Standard to say that the Conservatives could lose more elections if they do not change their stance on Brexit.

So that is really the lesson of last night for Theresa May: she is the prime minister for the whole of the United Kingdom, not just for her party or the hardest of hard Brexiteers. She must reach out, urgently, to those millions of people who simply do not share the worldview of Farage, Gove and Fox. Yes, the Brexiteers won on June 23 — but with victory comes magnanimity and responsibility. It is now Theresa May’s duty to show a bit of both. Otherwise Richmond may turn out to be the first of many election upsets.

  • Downing Street has said the byelection result will not stop the government delivering Brexit. A Number 10 spokesman said:

We had an election and we had a referendum. The referendum result was very clear and the majority of the country expressed an opinion for us to leave the EU. The message from the British people was loud and clear on June 23 that there is a desire for us to leave the EU. The government is getting on with delivering that.

Asked whether the result might make the prime minister reconsider her decision not to hold a second EU referendum, the spokesman replied: “No.” Earlier today the Conservative party said the result “doesn’t change anything” in relation to government policy over Brexit or Heathrow.

  • Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, has paid tribute to Zac Goldsmith, the former Richmond Park MP. Goldsmith “made a remarkable contribution” to the Commons, Johnson said.

He was heroic and principled in standing up for what he believes in on Heathrow expansion. He will be missed but he will certainly be back.

That’s all from me for today.

Thanks for the comments.

Sarah Olney, the new MP for Richmond Park.
Sarah Olney, the new MP for Richmond Park. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images

The Liberal Democrats’ newest MP walked out of a live radio interview after being given a grilling over her position on Brexit, the Press Association reports.

Sarah Olney, who ousted former Tory Zac Goldsmith in the Richmond Park by-election, disappeared off air just three minutes into the Talk Radio broadcast.

The premature exit came after tricky questioning by presenter Julia Hartley-Brewer on her calls for a referendum on the terms of Britain’s exit from the European Union.

She said: “Voters knew what they were voting for in your by-election, they knew what they were voting for in the EU referendum. Why do we think that one election should be re-run and one shouldn’t?”

Olney said the terms of Brexit had not been clear during the referendum and it had been a vote on the departure rather than the destination.

“There was no clear manifesto for what happened to our membership of the single market or what happened to freedom of movement,” she said.

Hartley-Brewer replied: “Every single leading member of the remain campaign said a vote to leave the EU was a vote to leave the single market. Nothing unclear about that at all.”

After a few seconds of silence, an unnamed aide stepped in and told the presenter: “I’m really sorry but Sarah has to leave now.”

Hartley-Brewer said the MP “should be able to answer some simple questions” about her policy and asked for her to be put back on air but was told Olney had another interview to attend.

“If she doesn’t want to answer questions from a radio station perhaps she is not fit to be an MP”, the presenter added.

A Richmond Park analysis reading list

I’ve already posted three Guardian analysis pieces about the byelection, by Dave Hill (see 8.40am), by Anushka Asthana (see 10.35am) and by me (see 9.23am.)

Here are five more analysis articles that are worth reading.

The outgoing MP may be a Conservative (until recently, at least). But the loser was Labour. The party took 3.7% of votes, down from 12.3% last year, and lost its deposit. It obtained fewer votes (1,515) than it has members in the seat (it claims over 1,600). That may reflect tactical voting: left-wing voters lending support to the Ms Olney. But it also speaks to Labour’s lacklustre voice on Europe (notwithstanding the wise appointment of Sir Keir Starmer as its Brexit spokesman) and general funk.

And it speaks to a wider structural evolution. Three or four years ago, with UKIP on the rise and the Lib Dems in power with the Tories, the talk was of the fragmentation of the right of British politics. That period seems to have passed. The 2015 election saw the Conservatives consume the Lib Dems’ centrist flank. The Brexit vote and Theresa May’s nationalist tilt has attracted back some Tory defectors to UKIP (hence her party now routinely exceeds 40% in polls).

Today the fragmentation is more on the left. Particularly under Paul Nuttall, its statist new leader, UKIP is now overwhelmingly a problem for Labour; especially in the sort of post-industrial areas that have long voted for the party but strongly supported Brexit.

In Newbury, in May 1993, when the voters amassed behind a Lib Dem to keep out a Tory, Labour ran a member of its head office staff as the candidate and sent in Peter Mandelson to plan the campaign, and harvested just 2% of the vote (compared with 3.7% in Richmond Park). It was, to put it mildly, not an accurate pointer to what might happen at the 1997 general election.

The significance of yesterday’s vote is that the electorate in a heavily pro-EU constituency were given a one-off chance to rid themselves of their pro-Brexit MP, and seized it. The result says nothing, one way or the other, about the Labour Party’s uncertain future.

The result in Richmond will make many in Labour and the Conservative party nervous. For Tories who won their seats from Lib Dems in 2015, this is a sign that there is a small but significant block of voters for whom Brexit is a motivating issue. (Nearly three-quarters of voters in Richmond voted Remain.) For Labour, the concern is that a political discussion polarised around pro/anti-Brexit lines leaves them out of the picture - as has happened in Scotland, where the narrative is framed around independence/unionism.

What a sensational, media-saturated by-election does, though, is change the atmosphere, especially in the House of Lords. If the supreme court rules in January that parliament must vote on article 50, it will have to go through both Houses. Until this morning, the Lords would have felt bound by the referendum. Now there is evidence that the will of the people is not as clear-cut as the prime minister insists it is.

The House of Lords is still unlikely to delay article 50. Angela Smith, the leader of the Labour peers, has said they will not obstruct it. But a few more Paleo-European peers in all parties and on the cross benches may be emboldened, and if anything else happens before the bill is tabled they may be more emboldened still.

Updated

This is from Ipsos MORI’s Ben Page.

Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, has told LBC that Theresa May has now effectively become the leader of Ukip. He said:

There is no point in Ukip now because Theresa May has become the leader of Ukip. They’ve taken that right-wing extreme view on Brexit. Something that most people who voted leave I think don’t actually agree with.

Updated

The academic Rob Ford has been tweeting about the size of the swing in Richmond Park.

Chuka Umunna, the former shadow business secretary, has told the Evening Standard that he has no time for politicians, like the Lib Dems, who are calling for a second referendum on the EU. He told the paper:

I really have no time for calls for a second referendum because I think it comes across as disrespectful to those who voted to leave. Those calls reinforce what I feel is a false stereotype — of a bunch of people in London who think they know best.

Labour is not calling for a second referendum, but Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, recently refused to rule one out.

Grant Shapps, a former Conservative chairman, has criticised his party’s decision not to put up a candidate against Zac Goldsmith in Richmond Park.

This chart, from James Kanagasooriam from Populus, indicates which Conservative seats might be vulnerable to tactic voting by aggrieved remain supporters. (They’re the seats above the blue line.)

Zac Goldsmith’s brother Ben has been tweeting about the result this morning.

The Sun’s Tom Newton Dunn points out that Goldsmith deleted a rather coarser version of this in the early hours of the morning.

The Conservative MP Anna Soubry, a staunch remain supporter, has welcomed the Richmond Park result.

Earlier I quoted research from the academic Chris Hanretty showing Richmond Park to be one of the most pro-remain constituencies in the countries. (See 9.23am.) This morning he has tweeted a link to an updated table, saying it is the 28th most pro-remain seat in the country.

Guy Shrubsole has turned this into a more readable chart, with colour coding by political party.

The Liberal Democrats victory in the Richmond Park by-election could place the party back on the road to significant gains in the House of Commons, according to one of the country’s leading psephologists.

Prof John Curtice said Sarah Olney’s defeat of Zac Goldsmith was not simply about the Conservative party but also something that ought to worry Labour, which he described as a “fragile creature” that had taken another blow.

He suggested the outcome suggested voters were “beginning to forgive the coalition” and warned that Labour worried about the Ukip threat, it ought to pay attention to the risk at the much larger socially liberal end of its spectrum of potential voters.

“This gives the Liberal Democrats the opportunity to get back into general election game,” the academic at Strathclyde university told the Guardian.

Its not going to put them in a position to be the next government but it potentially puts them back onto the road to securing significant representation in the House of Commons once again.

He asked if it could be comparable to the party’s 1990 Eastbourne byelection victory, which came off the back of disastrous polling but led to a solid performance in the 1992 general election. “Do we see them go into double figures for Liberal Democrats?” he asked about the national polls.

Curtice said the Lib Dems had tapped into a “niche market” of around half of remain supporters who were still deeply upset about the Brexit decision, but said it was a part of the electorate that the Lib Dems were “ready to exploit”. He described the typical potential Lib Dem voter as socially liberal and a university graduate.

And that, he argued, should worry Labour, which had been very focused on the Ukip threat but had another concern to contend with.

If I were the Labour party I would be worried if the Lib Dems are back in the game. Labour is worrying about losing socially conservative end of the coalition, but they forget that it is smaller than the socially liberal end.

He suggested that Jeremy Corbyn’s party’s nervousness about respecting the Brexit vote wasn’t necessarily in line with its current electorate.

Everyone is going around with an outdated vision of what a typical Labour voter is about. Between two thirds and three quarters of Labour supporters voted remain.

Farron says byelection shows that government Brexit policy can be changed

Here are the main points from Tim Farron’s briefing with the press in Richmond Park.

  • Farron said the byelection result showed that the government’s Brexit policy could be changed. And he renewed his call for a second referendum on Brexit, to give voters a say over the final deal.

Britain deserves a more moderate way forward than the extreme version of Brexit that Theresa May is currently following. This byelection gives real heart to the majority of people in this country who just think things could be done better, that we would have an open, tolerant, united country ...

If the British people decide to say to Theresa May that there is a better way forward than the one she is proceeding with, and if we therefore end up with either a soft Brexit or, best still in my view, that the terms of the deal are put to the British people at the end of all this, as a consequence of her fear of losing dozens of seats to the Liberal Democrats, we will have done a great day’s work for the British people ...

This result shows that, whilst we haven’t changed the balance of the House of Commons vastly ... what it might do though is change the direction of British politics.

  • He claimed that leave voters were backing the Lib Dems because they wanted Britain to stay in the single market.

Most of them don’t regret their vote in June. But they do regret Theresa May taking their vote and perverting it into something they never meant it to be. The believe that we should be in the single market, even if we are outside the European Union. Given that that is the case, given that millions of people think that, surely our argument that we should have a referendum on the terms of the deal is gaining traction.

He also claimed that a third of Tory voters who backed leave in the constituency had voted Lib Dem. (See 10.25am.)

There is evidence to back up what Farron is saying. This analysis by John Curtice for NatCen found that even amongst leave voters there is strong support for retaining aspects of the single market like free trade. But the research also found the same voters want aspects of “hard” Brexit, like migration controls.

  • Farron accused Theresa May of not showing proper leadership on Europe.

There are two forms of leadership. One is when you see the way you think the country is going, you run around the front and you pretend that’s you. I think Theresa May has done that. The other is where you are bold, you say this is where we believe the country should be, and you have the courage of your convictions and you argue for that. That is the leadership we have been showing and we have been rewarded for that today.

  • He said the Liberal Democrats could stage a big revival very quickly.

Let’s not assume that given the massive shocks we’ve had in British politics and global politics in recent months that the Liberal Democrats’ comeback is either inevitable or needs to take forever. It is entirely in the hands of British people. If they want there to be a progressive, moderate opposition that can really stand up to the Tories, given that Labour have shuffled off that space, then the Liberal Democrats’ role has never been more necessary. This is a historic moment for the country. Let’s see what happens next.

As an example, he cited Scotland as an example, saying that after the independence referendum the SNP went from having a small number of MPs to “near total domination”.

  • He dismissed claims the Richmond Park is not a typical constituency because it is strongly pro-remain and has a very high proportion of graduates. When this was put to him he replied:

There is no such thing as a typical constituency ... The reality is that, wherever you are in this country, there will be a balance of opinion.

  • He dismissed calls for an anti-Conservative “progessive alliance”. Although he said he was very grateful to the Greens for not putting up a candidate against the Lib Dems in Richmond Park, he said that he thought the best way to advance progressive goals was through a Lib Dem fightback.
Tim Farron with Sarah Olney on Richmond Green.
Tim Farron with Sarah Olney on Richmond Green. Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA

Farron says he “couldn’t be more pleased” about the fact the Lib Dems now have a female MP.

Olney says all the main candidates in Richmond Park were opposed to Heathrow expansion. So that is why it is safe to assume Brexit was a key factor, she says.

Tim Farron and Sarah Olney are now talking to Sky News.

Farron says there are been 23 gains in council byelections since the referendum. He says 13 of those came in leave areas.

Here is my colleague Anushka Asthana’s take on the byelection result.

And here is an excerpt.

It all resulted in a stunning victory for the Lib Dems, who overturned one of the Tories’ safest looking seats. The party will deservedly cheer the result as a statement about the government’s direction on Brexit and also take heart that they still have the ability to squeeze a third party – often a critical factor in first past the post elections.

But these should be cautious celebrations.

This byelection has shown that Farron’s 48% strategy – targeting the very large minority of voters who backed remain in the EU referendum – can cut through in a place like Richmond.

Still, for a party crushed to just eight MPs in 2015, Richmond Park is only a tiny step back in the right direction. The Lib Dems have made it into the foothills of a hike back to electoral relevance. They know that to make serious gains up the mountain of a general election means much more than persuading the most fiercely pro-EU electorate in parts of London.

Updated

Farron says a third of Tory voters who backed leave voted Lib Dem in the byelection

Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, is in Richmond Park speaking to the media.

He has just repeated the point he made on the Today programme about how a large number of leave voters backed the Lib Dems in the byelection. He told the Today programme:

If I tell you that nearly a third of Tory voters from the last election who voted Leave in June voted Liberal Democrat yesterday you will see that this is not just about Remain versus Leave rerun, it’s about people trying to say to Theresa May we do not like the extreme version of Brexit outside the single market you are taking us down.

I will post more from his briefing shortly.

Tim Farron in Richmond Park constituency.
Tim Farron in Richmond Park constituency. Photograph: Sky News

Updated

The Belgian MEP and former prime minister Guy Verhofstadt has tweeted his congratulations to Sarah Olney. He is head of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe group in the European parliament, which the Lib Dems belong to, but more importantly he is the European parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator.

10 lessons from the Richmond Park byelection result

Some byelections turn out to be of immense importance, either shifting the direction of national politics, or illuminating a change that is already underway. Most byelections have no real significance at all. And there are some that appear to be crucial landmarks at the time, but that subsequently turn out to be relatively insignificant.

Last week Nick Clegg, the former Lib Dem leader, said victory for his party in Richmond Park would be one of the biggies. It “could cause the government to rethink its hard Brexit agenda”, he said.

That is probably an exaggeration, although the byelection may well have some implications for Brexit. Here are 10 lessons from the Richmond Park byelection.

1 - Voters in Richmond Park were making a protest about Brexit - but they were not necessarily voting against Theresa May’s Brexit. Zac Goldsmith triggered the byelection so that he could stand as an independent and register his opposition to a Heathrow third runway, but the Lib Dems neutralised that by saying they would oppose the Heathrow third runway just as strongly. Instead they invited voters to use the byelection to vote against “hard” Brexit and in favour of a second referendum. But Lib Dems who campaigned in the seat admit that many people were supporting them not specifically because they are opposed to what May and David Davis are doing but because they wanted to vote against the entire 23 June referendum result. In other words, it may well have been more of a vote against Vote Leave than a vote against the Conservative government.

2 - The government’s working majority is now down to 13. Assuming that Zac Goldsmith would have voted with the government on everything apart from Heathrow, that’s a reduction from 15. That does not help, but it is not in itself too disastrous for May.

3 - Byelection losses can put pressure on governments to change policy - but there are two good reasons why there is is little chance of that happening here. Leaders fear losing seats in byelections not so much because their majority goes down but because, if all their MPs start getting scared that they too will lose their seats because of the poll tax or abolishing the 10p rate of income tax or whatever, the parliamentary party becomes unmanageable. But May is unlikely to face a delegation of MPs coming to see her to tell her that she must change course over Brexit. Why? First, this may well have been more of an anti Brexit vote than an anti “hard” Brexit vote. And, second, Richmond Park is one of the most pro-remain seats in the country. It is estimated that 72% of people there voted remain (compared to the national figure of 48%). This figure is based on research by the academic Chris Hanretty. (The referendum results were announced by local authority area, not by parliamentary constituency, which meant Hanretty had to devise a formula to convert one into the other.) On the Today programme John Humphrys said Richmond Park had the 17th highest remain vote. This Hanretty chart (pdf) shows only seven English seats with higher remain votes. Whatever, there are very few Tory MP who will worry about a remain backlash as strong as the one in Richmond Park.

UPDATE: Hanretty has a better chart here, showing Richmond Park as the 28th most pro-remain constituency in the country.

4 - But this result will embolden Lib Dem MPs and peers, because they can now claim to have a mandate to oppose a “hard” Brexit and to push for a second referendum. Sarah Olney’s election takes the number of Lib Dem MPs in the Commons from eight to nine and the Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg was right to dismiss them as a relatively puny Commons force. (See 8.18am.) But they have 104 peers in the Lords, where their impact can be decisive, and Richmond Park will now make those peers feel more confident about amending the bill parliament may have to pass to trigger article 50.

5 - The Lib Dems have also received a fillip nationally. One byelection win by itself will not revive the party, which is still doing dreadfully in national polls. It was at just 7% in the Guardian/ICM poll this week. But there was a fear the party had become toxic during the coalition. Richmond Park shows it can attract new voters in significant numbers.

6 - Which is why the chances of an early election seem more remote. There may be relatively few Tory MPs worried about the Brexit implications of the byelection. But at the last election 27 Tories won seats from the Lib Dems, and a swing on the scale achieved by Olney (21.5 points) would see many of them (or most? I haven’t checked the numbers) lose to a Lib Dem challenger. A 2017 general election now looks riskier.

7 - Tactical voting is back. Many of the Lib Dem byelection victories in the 1990s were achieved because the party found it easy to get Labour supporters to vote tactically for it against the Tories and that seems to have been happening in Richmond Park. Labour fielded a strong candidate, Christian Wolmar, but his vote collapsed. Tactical voting seems the obvious explanation, which is why the result does not really tell us anything about Labour and Jeremy Corbyn (despite Tim Farron’s attempts to claim otherwise - see 7.47am.)

8 - But the result may raise questions about the need for a “progressive alliance”. On the left there has been increasing interest in the idea that progressive parties should form electoral pacts in some seats so that the party best placed to defeat the Tories gets a free run. The Greens adopted this approach in Richmond Park, and they are suggesting it worked. (See 8.09am.) Labour’s decision not to adopt this approach was controversial. But Labour supporters voted tactically anyway, suggesting that perhaps formal “stand aside” deals are unnecessary.

9 - Parties still matter enormously. Some commentators claim that traditional political parties are dying, and that the future belongs to insurgent outsiders like Donald Trump. But, in the UK at least, it is virtually impossible to win an election without having a party machine behind you. Goldsmith’s supporters believe that one of the main reasons he lost was that, once he decided to stand as an independent, he lost access to the activist support and voter ID data that are essential components of victory in a contest like this. In terms of volunteer numbers, he was overwhelmed by the Lib Dems.

10 - Negative campaigning can backfire. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some people were motivated to vote against Goldsmith because they have not forgiven him for what was perceived as the Islamophobic tone of his campaign against Sadiq Khan in the London mayoral contest. It was probably a marginal factor, but one he may reflect on. Over the last 12 months Goldsmith has seen his career crash spectacularly, losing two elections, one of which (Richmond Park) he was confident of winning until very recently. Students of May’s summer purge of the Cameroons will note that this is another metropolitan Etonian who has crashed out of politics.

Updated

Here is my colleague Dave Hill’s take on the byelection result.

And here’s an excerpt.

For Olney and her party, victory will feel like the next step on a national comeback trail in a region of the capital that used to be an orange stronghold. For London, it is a local reassertion of its people’s disquiet over the turbulence triggered by the Brexit vote and the destructive mentalities it has unleashed. A freak of a byelection that risked being pointless has ended up as a restatement of some of the capital’s most distinctive values. It won’t be the last time the city makes its feelings known.

Q: The Lib Dems have been here before. But it does not constitute a comeback, does it.

Farron says this is the Lib Dems’ first byelection gain for 10 years. Things can change dramatically and quickly, he says. There is a need for a moderate party that can take on the Tories, he says.

And that’s it. The interview is over.

Rees-Mogg says having one extra Lib Dem in the Commons won’t change much.

And he says having a second referendum would amount to rejecting the result of the first referendum. That would be undemocratic, he says.

He says it is a shame that Zac Goldsmith will no longer be in parliament. He promised to resign if the Heathrow third runway went ahead and he kept his promise.

Farron says Goldsmith behaved with good grace.

Farron says people will feel betrayed by the Brexit decision. That is why there needs to a second referendum, he says. He says it would be referendum on the deal, not a re-run of the first referendum.

Q: But people would be able to vote to stay in the EU.

Farron confirms that is the case.

Tim Farron's Today programme interview

Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, is being on the Today programme now. The Conservative Jacob Rees-Mogg is being interviewed too.

Q: This does not tell us much about your party, does it?

Tim Farron says byelections do not change the government, but they can change the direction of the government.

He says nearly a third of Tories who voted leave voted Lib Dem. That shows they are concerned about a hard Brexit, he says.

Q: But Richmond Park had the 17th biggest vote for remain.

Farron says the Lib Dems have gained 23 seats in byelections since June, and that many of those were in leave areas. That shows people are worried about a hard Brexit, he says.

Jacob Rees-Mogg says this is a strong remain area. He accepts that people voted because they were unhappy about the leave vote.

Greens suggest Richmond Park result shows 'progressive alliance' strategy worked

Caroline Lucas, the co-leader of the Green party, is suggesting the Richmond Park result is a victory for her “progressive alliance” strategy. The Greens decided not to put up a candidate in the byelection, and to back Sarah Olney instead, because they wanted to maximise the chances of a progressive candidate winning. And they think they made a difference. At the general election the Greens won 3,548 votes in the seat. This morning Zac Goldsmith lost by 1,872 votes, the Greens point out in a press release.

In her statement Lucas says:

The regressive alliance has been defeated and the government has suffered a hammer blow to its hard brexit plans. By standing up at this unique moment the local Green party showed real leadership – and can take a great deal of the credit for the Zac’s toppling.

It’s good to see a candidate elected who will oppose Heathrow expansion, campaign for a fair electoral system and do their best to protect their constituents from the post-referendum chaos being inflicted on them by the Government.

The Green party will, of course, continue to stand in the majority of elections – and look forward to campaigning to win seats in Richmond in the 2018 local elections.

The Lib Dem leader Tim Farron has just been on Sky News. He made the claim about the Richmond Park result being a vote against the government’s Brexit policy that he made in the statement he released overnight. (See 7.25am.) But he also claimed that it was a rejection of Labour, and that people were turning to the Lib Dems because they wanted a moderate opposition to the Tories that was not being provided by Jeremy Corbyn’s party.

These are from Sky’s Beth Rigby.

Tim Farron claims Richmond Park result 'will terrify the Conservatives'

Here is the statement Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, issued earlier this morning after Sarah Olney’s victory.

The message is clear: The Liberal Democrats are back and we are carrying the torch for all of those who want a real opposition to this Conservative Brexit government.

We are the only party fighting to keep Britain open, tolerant and united, and the only party that has said, loudly and proudly, that we want Britain to remain a member of the Single Market and that we want the people to be given the final say over the Brexit deal. That message has been resoundingly backed by the people of Richmond Park.

This was a remarkable, come-from-nowhere upset that will terrify the Conservatives. A year and a half ago, their man won by nearly 40% and had a majority of more than 20,000. In one fell swoop we have wiped that out completely.

If this was a general election, this swing would mean the Conservatives would lose dozens of seats to the Liberal Democrats – and their majority with it. No one believes the Labour party will win any seats off the Tories – and the SNP could only possibly take one off them. But there are dozens in our reach. So, as this by-election has demonstrated, the only way to prevent a Conservative majority at the next election is to vote Liberal Democrat.

Byelection results in full

Here are the full byelection results from the Press Association.

Sarah Olney (LD) 20,510 (49.68%, +30.41%)

Zac Goldsmith (Ind) 18,638 (45.15%)

Christian Wolmar (Lab) 1,515 (3.67%, -8.68%)

Howling Laud Hope (Loony) 184 (0.45%)

Fiona Syms (Ind) 173 (0.42%)

Dominic Stockford (CPA) 164 (0.40%)

Maharaja Jammu and Kashmir (Love) 67 (0.16%)

David Powell (ND) 32 (0.08%)

LD maj 1,872 (4.53%)

Electorate 77,243; Turnout 41,283 (53.45%, -23.01%)

For the first time in more than 10 years the Liberal Democrats are celebrating gaining a seat in a byelection. But the Lib Dems believe that the surprise result in Richmond Park, where Sarah Olney overturned the 23,000 majority that Zac Goldsmith when he won the seat at the general election for the Conservatives, does not just herald a revival for what was once the UK’s third party; Olney and her party sought to turn this into a “Brexit byelection” and in her victory speech she claimed that Richmond Park was sending a clear message to Theresa May.

The people of Richmond Park and North Kingston have sent a shockwave through this Conservative Brexit government and our message is clear: we do not want a hard Brexit, we do not want to be pulled out of the single market and we will not let intolerance, division and fear win.

Here is our overnight story about the result.

And here is last night’s byelection live blog, with more about all the developments at the count.

I will be focusing on reaction to the result this morning, with analysis of what it means.

If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

I try to monitor the comments BTL but normally I find it impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer direct questions, although sometimes I miss them or don’t have time. Alternatively you could post a question to me on Twitter.

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