The Result

11,544 votes. It's a remarkable and rather humbling experience to know that such a number of people in Macclesfield voted for me and for the Liberal Democrats.
True, we came second. David Rutley won the seat fair and square - but we made the Tories work for it! We increased our share of the vote by 3%, against a national increase of 1%, so the local team did well. I had great support from the local party, in Poynton, Bollington and Disley as well as in the town of Macclesfield itself, and it was a real pleasure to work with them all.
The result establishes us firmly as the main opposition party in the constituency, which gives us a great base to build on in elections - general and local - in the future.