First, the good news. It was great to see the Lib Dems coming out of the local elections with more seats than we had going into the elections this year – we had a net gain of 45 seats. These convincing wins were a powerful reminder to our party about how our recovery must be built from our local government base.

But maybe even better was seeing councils where the Lib Dems had ceased to be represented getting their first Lib Dem councillors back onto the council.