By Tom Holmes
December 13 2019, 07.30
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The Liberal Democrats will be looking to take the positives from Streatham constituency, as they leapfrogged the Conservatives into second place.
Lib Dem candidate Helen Thompson secured 13,286 votes, and 23.5% of the vote, up 17% from 3,611 in 2017.
In comparison, Conservative candidate Rory O’Broin picked up just 9,060 votes, down 5.3% from 11,927 in 2017.
Ms Thompson said: “We’ll be looking to build on the great foundation that we’ve built during this campaign.
“We’ve been really strong in Streatham in the past and we’re really looking to build back up to that level.”
The Liberal Democrats’ best showing in Streatham came in 2010, when Chris Nicholson secured 16,778 votes.
At the time that was worth 35.8% of the vote, but Ms Thompson’s performance is the strongest since that election.
Previous Streatham MP Chuka Umunna stood in the Cities of London and Westminster constituency for the Liberal Democrats, but failed to win the seat.
Ms Thompson was highly critical of the Labour Party’s performance, as the party lost 59 seats overall, giving Boris Johnson’s Conservatives a majority.
She said: “None of us are happy with the way that the wider election has gone, because we didn’t want to see a Conservative majority.
“But Labour needs to look at why it’s suffered the losses that it has.
“We obviously got a very big increase in our vote share which reflects people are looking for an alternative to Labour, particularly people who voted remain.
“Labour have let quite a lot of people down by not taking a real Brexit stance as we’ve been hearing.”
It was also a bad night for Ms Thompson’s party overall.
Although the Lib Dems increased their vote share by 4.2%, the most of any party, they lost a seat from 2017, leaving them on 11.
One particularly bad blow for the party was losing their leader, Jo Swinson, who lost her seat of Dunbartonshire East.
The SNP’s Amy Callaghan took the seat, overturning a 5,339 Lib Dem majority to win by just 149 votes.
“It’s obviously very sad to see Jo losing by such a tiny margin but that’s all that there is to be said on that.”
