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Famous By-Elections: Lord David Alton and Liverpool Edge Hill 1979
2 Playsin 14 hours
In this episode, Matt Davis interviews Lord David Alton about his extraordinary victory in the 1979 Liverpool Edge Hill by-election. At just 27 years old, Alton achieved one of the most stunning upsets in British electoral history, overturning a massive Labour majority in one of their safest seats during the Winter of Discontent.
The conversation explores how a young Liberal teacher and councillor built a grassroots campaign that capitalised on voter anger at industrial chaos, uncollected refuse, and unburied dead in Liverpool's streets. Alton reveals the innovative community politics approach that connected him to local people, the role of local media in amplifying his message, and the dramatic final days when his victory helped seal the fate of Jim Callaghan's government.
From dirty tricks involving the National Front to betting against 30-1 odds, and becoming both the youngest MP and the shortest-serving member in parliamentary history, this is the inside story of a by-election that proved no seat is truly safe when voters decide it's time for change.
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Transcript
Introduction to Liverpool Edge Hill By-election
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Observation Podcast. I'm Matt Davis and today we have another episode in our series on famous by-elections. Today we'll be talking about the 1979 by-election in Liverpool Edge Hill.
00:00:22
Speaker
I'm joined by the winner of this by-election, David Alton, who has since sat at a crossbench pier since 1997 to discuss some of his experiences and what makes it such an interesting and important part of modern British electoral history.
00:00:35
Speaker
Thank you very much for joining me. It's a pleasure, Matt.
Alton's Early Political Challenges
00:00:39
Speaker
Now, you'd stood in the Liverpool edge in liverableol Edge Hill seat twice before in the 1974 general elections.
00:00:47
Speaker
Why did you think you could win this time? Well, it wasn't exactly a safe seat for the Liberal Party. I mean the Liberal Party hadn't contested the seat ah since the Second World War, just after the Second World war And when I was selected to fight the seat in 1974, it was regarded as a complete dead-end, hopeless seat. But I'd won a council award there ah when I was still a student, and we'd gone on to win every single council seat in the constituency. um And I contested the 74 elections and was surprised to find that, while I was what a 23-year-old teacher with still pretty...
00:01:28
Speaker
ah inexperienced in every respect, but nearly ah third of the people voted for me in the two general elections. And curiously, although the Liberal Party's share of the vote, which in in the February 74 election was about 6 million, had fell back to about, I think, 4.5 million in the October election, ah there were only two seats in the UK where the vote actually went up marginally. One was Richmond-upon-Thames and the other one was Liverpool-Edge Hill.
00:01:55
Speaker
And I thought, well, if a third of the people are willing to vote for me at this stage and know my life, maybe it's worth holding on in there and giving it another go.
Liverpool's Conditions and Alton's Leadership Rise
00:02:03
Speaker
So that's why I felt it was seat that It meant a lot to me. Half the homes had no inside sanitation, running hot water or bathrooms.
00:02:12
Speaker
There were still streets lit by gaslight in the neighbourhood where I'd been elected as a councillor. And in those intervening years, between 1974 and 1979, I became chairman of the housing committee of the city. We took control of the council. I was deputy leader.
00:02:26
Speaker
And I was able able to actually start doing some very significant practical things for the people on the ground. So I did know that it was... worth having another shot at this and that people needed to be properly represented. It had been taken for granted.
00:02:40
Speaker
it was the The Labour Party saw it as a safe seat. It was one of the safest in the UK. And there was an old saying that if you put a donkey up with a red rosette around its neck, it would have got elected. So I think safe seats are the curse of British politics. And seats are only as safe as people decide
1979's Political Climate and Labour's Position
00:02:58
Speaker
to make them. but And think wanted to prove the pundits and the commentators, as the sophologists and everybody else wrong.
00:03:06
Speaker
So yeah, I had another crack at it um and was intending to fight the 1979 general election. ah In fact, a group of us gathered in my home in January, 1979,
00:03:17
Speaker
nine to watch Jim Callaghan, we thought, announce a general election. It was after the death of the incumbent, Sir Arthur Irvine. He'd died in December 1978.
00:03:31
Speaker
But the country was in the throes of the winter of discontent. The Labour government of James Callaghan was on a knife edge in the 1974 election. previous general election, Labour had secured a wafer-fin majority of only three seats in the House.
00:03:46
Speaker
And two years later, of course, Harold Wilson had resigned and handed over to Jim Callaghan and the Lib Lab packed had been made to try and hold up the the government. but It couldn't lurch on indefinitely, and everyone assumed he was going to go to the country.
00:04:00
Speaker
And if he had done, he might even have won. um But the extraordinary thing was that at the end of the of the but broadcast, and he had famously arrived... back during the winter of discontent, saying, crisis, what crisis, they became famous words and that the Sun newspaper ran on there on their front pages. i mean, the dead weren't being buried in Liverpool, the street the streets were full of garbage, there were there were strikes everywhere.
00:04:27
Speaker
It was a shocking, terrible moment. And ah the idea that this government was going to limp on seemed ludicrous. And of course, the Scottish National Party decided to table a vote of no confidence.
00:04:40
Speaker
ah The Conservatives said that they would support that and there would therefore be a vote of no confidence. So despite what Jim Callaghan had said, ah he had to fight for his political life in that vote of no confidence, which took place in March 1979, ironically, the night before my by-election was then being held. So there we are. Well, that's a great...
00:05:04
Speaker
general overview of the picture around this time. i was wondering what were the key issues of this campaign for this by-election?
Campaign Issues and Liberal Party Struggles
00:05:12
Speaker
Well, for millions of people, the winter of discontent had become the last straw.
00:05:18
Speaker
And the Conservatives, now led, of course, by Margaret Thatcher, have sensed widespread hostility in the public and private sectors to wildcat strikes, to picket lines, increasingly militant trade unions.
00:05:32
Speaker
and the organised nationwide campaign for increased pay, regardless of the economic circumstances. And so against that backdrop of high inflation and a bitterly cold winter, it was the harshest, I think, in 16 years. And Liverpool streets, as I say, full of uncollected refuse, a strike of grave diggers had left the dead unburied. There was real anger.
00:05:57
Speaker
And the government appeared totally incapable of resolving this industrial anarchy. And there were layoffs leading to massive unemployment benefit claims.
00:06:08
Speaker
ah i I sensed that voters, even in this fiercely loyal Labour city, in one of the safest seats in the country, held by them since...
00:06:20
Speaker
pretty well World War I, were determined to stage a ballot box revolt. So I was, I suppose, nationally and locally, it was time for a change. And I was poised, I think, to be the beneficiary of this if we could only organise a strong and and vibrant campaign. However, let me also add, it wasn't exactly a good moment for the Liberal Party. It was running at 5% or 6% in the opinion polls.
00:06:45
Speaker
The LibLab pact, which had propped up the Callaghan government, was deeply unpopular. And also the former leader, Jeremy Fork, was on a conspiracy to murder charge, and not the most auspicious of moments to be going into a by-election.
00:07:00
Speaker
I was wondering a bit about, because a lot has changed since then. So what was campaigning like at the time?
Grassroots and Media Influence
00:07:07
Speaker
How did it work? Well, people dismiss me as a pavement politician. I always thought I was bit more than that. But fair enough. I thought it was better to be on the pavements and close to the people than it was to be these days just sitting behind a screen and tapping buttons. ah ah um passionately believed in the importance throughout the whole of my life of staying connected to your roots, to two people. I lived in the heart of the constituency. I was a local councillor there.
00:07:39
Speaker
um I was running advice centre surgeries twice a week, every week. There were long queues all of the time with all of the problems that people had. so i was And I was sorting out people's problems. I was acting as the scribe, writing letters for them, but also um acting on on their behalf, trying to get things done.
00:07:57
Speaker
So I think all of those things were playing into the kind of campaigning. We ran focused newsletters regularly into every home, telling people what we were doing, but also asking them their opinions, getting them involved. It was real participatory politics. i I've been attracted into the young Liberals when I was a boy at school by Joe Grimmond, who was the then leader of the Liberal Party, and and he was very strong on the idea of participation and involvement.
00:08:28
Speaker
And the young liberals, of which I became the national president, promoted a thing called community politics. And I was trying to put that into practice on on the ground. So this wasn't just, you know, theoretical stuff. It was practical, ah hard-headed, active campaigning.
00:08:44
Speaker
And in that, I was very fortunate because the person who was my mentor, who became my close friend during that period, ah became known nationally when he became the National Liberal Party president as Jones the Vote. That was Trevor Jones, who knew a thing or two about campaigning. I mean, Trevor would always say, give them a fight and give them a show.
00:09:05
Speaker
And we had to do both of those things. we were We had grassroots organization throughout the whole of this constituency. There hadn't been a single Liberal Party member ah when I created the Edge Hill Liberal Association with myself and a few student friends.
00:09:21
Speaker
back in about 1972, after I'd become a councillor. And since then, we'd been able to get a lot of local involvement. So this wasn't abstract or just grouse, grumble politics, as it were, people grousing about how bad things were. People could see we were trying to turn frustrations and and even anger into something positive.
00:09:49
Speaker
OK, so you mentioned a lot about the importance of the local there. And I was wondering what the impact of the local newspapers was, as newspapers, I'm assuming, had a lot more importance at the time.
Opposition and Campaign Challenges
00:10:00
Speaker
oh yes. And the Liverpool Daily Post and the Liverpool Echo were great, not just local, but regional newspapers. and And there were local papers beyond that. that There was the Liverpool Weekly News, for instance,
00:10:14
Speaker
And all of them were papers that I i had i was active in in in working with journalists from from both of the the regional papers, the Daily Post and Echo.
00:10:25
Speaker
But I was also active in the radio media, which was a new phenomenon. that We now finally had BBC Radio, Merseyside and Radio City, the local commercial radio station.
00:10:37
Speaker
And... i I was ah always a passionate supporter of local radio. as ah As a boy at school, I'd taken part in a demonstration against the Labour government's attempts to close down the so-called pirate radio stations.
00:10:51
Speaker
um ah So it was something I... I cared about and believed in, but I got quite good at it as well, make recording short, sharp clips to go out on news bulletins about whatever the issues may be. And remember, I had a platform as the deputy leader of the city council and the housing chairman and being involved in many local issues that had a national dimension.
00:11:14
Speaker
So the newspapers were hugely important, but we also made our own media. And, you know, we had I learned how to use an offset LIFO printing press. We'd produce our newsletters. um I mean, after work, I was still a teacher, remember? I spent hours and hours printing newsletters, and we'd take it in shifts and turns to do that. So it was... This was...
00:11:36
Speaker
formidable stuff, but we all the little group of us who who were working together knew that communication was vital and that we couldn't just rely on somebody else to do that for us.
00:11:47
Speaker
I was fortunate that some of the journalists on the local newspaper took me very seriously. ah Annie Robinson, Anne Robinson, who was a journalist with the Echo in those days but became known for The Weakest Link and her national broadcast much later, but She wrote a brilliant piece. and She came out on the street with me she and I let her choose neighbourhoods in which to we would go, different parts of the constituency. So she couldn't say that I'd sort of orchestrated this.
00:12:15
Speaker
And maybe I was just lucky, I don't know, but she chose neighbourhoods where we got an amazing response. And then she wrote a piece saying, if he was on Mastermind and his subject was Liverpool Edge Hills, he'd walk away of all the prizes. It was a lovely lovely thing to say. And and that kind of...
00:12:31
Speaker
profile in the local press, I mean, it cut it and it was did a great deal. The Liverpool Daily Post was also crucial at the very end of the campaign in exposing what was a scandal.
00:12:43
Speaker
The National Front had put in nomination papers for a so-called gay liberal candidate. This was all to try and whip up sentiment around Forp Affair, which was being covered in all the national newspapers on an almost daily basis.
00:12:58
Speaker
And they discovered that the man who paid the deposit For that candidate, who was, as I say, a member of the far-right National Front, um was actually the chair of the one of the warred Labour parties ah in the constituency, and that ran as a big...
00:13:16
Speaker
story in the couple of days before the by-election, Liverpool people don't like those kinds of obviously dirty tricks, and it was a very odd alliance between Labour Party official and the National Front to try and discomfort the Liberal candidates, so it backfired badly.
Overcoming Divisions and Election Victory
00:13:34
Speaker
ah Okay, there is one other thing I'd like to go into quickly. ah Given Liverpool's demographics at the time, you feel as though your Roman Catholicism helped you win the seats? Well, there was a very well-known ah
00:13:50
Speaker
supporter of what had been the Liverpool Protestant Party, which was still on the city council. ah It had six members of the council. was bigger than the Liberal Party when I was first a student in Liverpool.
00:14:03
Speaker
They had six members. We, I think, had three of them, members. um But the Protestant Party had started to diminish in importance. The sectarianism that there'd been in Liverpool was something I strongly opposed anyway.
00:14:18
Speaker
And I'm glad to say that coming as I did anyway from a ah family that lived across the denominational divide, my dad, who was a demob desert rat, um came from an Anglican Protestant background. My mother, her first language was Irish and she was ah Catholic Catholic.
00:14:36
Speaker
And i I represented something different. And it was a moment in Liverpool where we'd seen the ah what people call the Mersey miracle. It was the ecumenism that was represented by our Archbishop Derek Warlock and the Anglican Bishop David Shepard and the moderators of the free churches who'd stood together with one another to try and overcome sectarianism.
00:14:59
Speaker
And I vividly remember this former ah significant member of what had been the Protestant Party saying to me, David, I'll be voting for you, not just because your posters are orange. and so And we both laughed. And I was very touched by that because I, you know, when as a student, a young Jewish friend said to me, we'll allow that to go to the to the derby match between Liverpool and Everton.
00:15:23
Speaker
he said, by the way, he said, who are you going to be supporting? And I said, well, I hadn't made up my mind because, of course, I'd arrived in Liverpool as a student from from London. I'm a Cockney by birth.
00:15:33
Speaker
And are my allegiances were with a London team. He said, well, you'll have to decide. And he said, well, of course, Everton is traditionally the Catholic team. I said, then in that case, I'll support Liverpool.
00:15:44
Speaker
um And it wasn't just because I was fed up being on the losing side on too many things anymore. It was a good choice. ah That was in 1969. And I've been a Liverpool supporter ever since because the sectarianism that you see in Glasgow, for instance, another British Irish city ah represented by football teams, I think disfigures life.
00:16:04
Speaker
And, you know, the day after my by-election, I reflected on on it in my maiden speech. The day after my by-election, Aerie Neve was blown up in the precincts, murdered in the precincts of Parliament.
00:16:17
Speaker
um by one of the Irish Republican organisations, the INLA. And i said in in my maiden speech that I hoped that the kind of sectarianism represented by that appalling act was something that I would be able to spend some of my life trying to counter and combat. And later on, I became the Irish Affairs spokesman for the Liberal Party and like to think I played a small part in helping the process of reconciliation and and building bridges, creating renewal.
00:16:49
Speaker
It was a very traumatic few days. My by-election was on the Thursday. Erin Eve was murdered on the Friday. I took my seat the following Tuesday. had to make my maiden speech within two hours of arriving because, of course, the government had been defeated by one vote on the Wednesday night. In fact...
00:17:07
Speaker
the ah the The outcome of the um vote of no confidence, which was 310 votes for the government and 311 votes against the government, um the assumption by Labour had been that if they could only win the Edshill by-election, they would have enough to see off thee the um vote of no confidence, which is why the SNP and the Conservatives pushed the vote to the night before the general election.
00:17:37
Speaker
And I was given that result at just after 10 o'clock on the Thursday night at my last eve of poll rally in Edge Hill. And I said to the voters, well, I hope you'll vote for me tomorrow, but you're going to have to vote for me again four weeks from now. And I became the shortest lived ever MP. But fortunately, the good people of Edge Hill decided not to throw me out four weeks later.
00:18:01
Speaker
We'll now stop for a short break before going into a few of those things you just said there.
Series on Historic General Elections
00:18:12
Speaker
Some elections don't just choose governments, they change nations. On observations in the first series on historic general elections, we take you inside the ballot boxes of history.
00:18:26
Speaker
The moments when Britain's political landscape was turned upside down. The great reform election of 1832, when the old order cracked and democracy began to widen. 1906, the liberal landslide that founded the welfare state. 1918, the coupon election, the first election after the great war, after suffrage,
00:18:50
Speaker
seeing millions vote for the very first time including women over 30. 1924, the first labor government and its dramatic fall. 1929, the flapper election which saw women vote on an equal footing to men.
00:19:07
Speaker
ninety ninety seven 1997, Tony Blair and the new labor sweeping away 18 years of conservative rule. And 2010, the dawn of coalition politics in the modern age.
00:19:19
Speaker
These were not just elections. They were turning points. They changed Great Britain. Join us on Observations in the coming weeks, the podcast that explores the votes, the voice, and the verdicts that define the nation.
00:19:34
Speaker
History at the ballot box. And
Election Night and Aftermath
00:19:42
Speaker
welcome back. So you spoke a bit about results night, but I was wondering, when did you have an idea that you had won?
00:19:50
Speaker
It would have been crazy on election day for me not to have thought I was going to win. I saw people surging into the polling stations. And obviously, i the morning's newspapers said that the general election ah was likely to be called, ah had been called the night night night before um people And I worried, well, maybe people will stay at home thinking, well, they're going to have to vote anyway four weeks from now. But I could see no evidence of that. People were pouring into the polling stations.
00:20:23
Speaker
There was a real enthusiasm in the air as well. And Liverpool people, they sometimes like like to do what they think is best rather than what the world tells them that they should do. They have a mind of their own and I i could see that day they had a mind of their own.
00:20:40
Speaker
um So I and the organization was amazing. i mean we some friends, supporters, family, all sorts of people had turned up to help on the day and you could see the organization coming into its own. We were very fortunate that ah although you know we a little group of us knew about community politics, but there was a man called John Spiller who'd been one of the great election agents of his day, and he he had been he was the election agent down in the West Country for North Devon, North Cornwall, for some of those traditional ah Celtic fringe liberal seats, but he knew how to organise election day ah in in a way that I'd never seen done before. It was like a military operation, and we had people...
00:21:26
Speaker
turning up from all parts of the country. There was a lovely, slightly eccentric man who described himself as a Gladstonian liberal who came up from Buckinghamshire, and he had a great tea urn that he brought with him, and box loads of cakes and ah eggs that had been laid by his head.
00:21:43
Speaker
And he spent most of his time just making sure that all the helpers were were but being fed and looked after. And there was a ah there was truly lovely atmosphere there.
00:21:55
Speaker
and a will to win. I mean, remember, in that previous parliament, 74 to 79, the Liberals had had 20 lost deposits. They hadn't won anything. been And it had been a very grim time. And David Steele himself said after the election that the by-election may not have created a sort of Orpington effect.
00:22:15
Speaker
It was too late to do that. But it did save some of those seats that would have otherwise gone. i mean, you look at the small majorities that people had, and it just instilled a so certain kind of confidence.
00:22:27
Speaker
And it led to national newspapers saying, well, maybe it's just a bit too early to entirely write off the whole of the parliamentary Liberal Party. Some of them may now survive. And that's what happened. But sadly, they lost...
00:22:39
Speaker
North Devon and North Cornwall and Montgomery, which had been held by the Liberal Party for 99 years. But happily, it was won back again in due course. But it seems sad to me as a sort of social historian to see a seat that had been held for 99 years being lost.
00:22:55
Speaker
But it was that kind of the election. It was ah it was it was a pretty was a pretty grim and this for liberals who you know It kept the lights burning in in very difficult circumstances, but this by-election gave them a a boost and it it enabled them to continue.
00:23:15
Speaker
Of course, Joe Grimond came to speak for me. He was due to speak at my either poll rallies. But of course, because the vote of no confidence, we had to move him ah and David Steele one night earlier. And we had a great rally at the Edge Hill School.
00:23:32
Speaker
And we had a lovely moment. He had a waspish kind of sense of humour. And of course, he was, for me, ah ah great hero. And having heard me speak, he said, I've listened to our young candidate this evening. He's made a A very good speech, he said, but there is one thing with which I profoundly disagreed, and I thought, Joe, this is not the moment to to tell the audience about my defects. And he and and I was waiting. What was it? what i said He said, he has told you that we are not better people than our opponents just for our way of doing things in a better way. said, that isn't true. We are better people than our opponents. He brought the house down, and and the candidate was mightily relieved at that moment.
00:24:15
Speaker
And then for the Liverpool rallies themselves, we we no longer had all these speakers. We had a series of meetings. And I was told by the Liberal Whip's Office in Parliament that they were sending two Scottish Liberal peers instead, and they sent a man called George Mackey, Lord Mackay of Ben Sheehan, Viscount Ferso.
00:24:35
Speaker
But when they got to Euston, they discovered the train to Liverpool didn't have a bar on board, so they refused to get on, and they came on the following... train instead, so they missed the first round of meetings, which was a pity because George gave a superb speech in which this decorated airman who had served in ah r RAF Bomber Command, he had a DFO and DFC, it connected him with an audience which included people who'd either seen action or suffered in the war, and indeed one of schools that
00:25:09
Speaker
schools in the constituency where children had been sheltering and in the basement, had suffered a direct hit from the Luftwaffe during the war.
00:25:20
Speaker
And one of the people who had helped to pull people out of that bombed school was sitting there in the audience that night, having changed his allegiances. He'd been a Labour supporter all his life.
00:25:32
Speaker
and said so at the end of the meeting. So there were all sorts of things that were happening that weren't planned, but nevertheless um were extraordinary. Even the dramatic entrance of my adoption meeting of a man called Alderman Hughie Carr, who was a veteran Labour Party supporter, and he came to the meeting to announce that he was leaving the Labour Party to campaign for me. And his Huey's defection was a harbinger, ah a telltale sign, if you like, that the by-election might not be the foregone conclusion that the national media had assumed. And of course, there was one other thing that was very reassuring for me on the day, the number of men who kept pulling out of their pockets little slips that they were showing me as they were going off to vote.
00:26:18
Speaker
They had seen the odds in the local bookies. And they got their own back on Ladbrokes, who had me, I think, at something like 30 to 1 against. They made quite a killing madary on that by-election. And I also knew that if they'd betted on me, they were probably almost certainly therefore going to go and vote for me.
00:26:36
Speaker
ah For no other reason than to improve their own odds. Yeah.
Retaining the Seat and Campaign Anecdotes
00:26:40
Speaker
ah Now, why do you think he retained this seat in the general election when that took place just a few weeks later?
00:26:49
Speaker
Well, again, Liverpool people, but they don't do blind allegiance, but they're incredibly loyal. And I think some of them thought, well, he gave the lad chance. He hasn't really had an opportunity to prove himself yet, has he? So they'll stick on in there with him. And my vote, although the turnout came up and turnout went up and Labour...
00:27:12
Speaker
saw a rise in their vote, but my vote was still pretty well what it was in the by-election. So I held the seat pretty handsomely. um The bigger issue for me was that it was all already had been announced that Ed Sheerl was likely to be abolished in the boundary review, which is then what happened. So that the following general election in 1983, I got 40,000 new voters that kept two-thirds of the Ed Sheerl seat.
00:27:39
Speaker
um And it became known as Mossy Hill, stretching from the Liverpool-Adelphi Hotel all the way to the Garston Bypass. And that would be another fight, almost of by-election report epic proportions in 1983. But by then we also had the alliance between the Liberals and the SDP and everything would would have changed in the four years that followed my by-election. 1979 was a moment for the old Liberal Party to hang on.
00:28:08
Speaker
And I think that alan the by-election, i mean, David Steele, as I say, said it himself, gave it that little boost, that crucial ah moment ah when anything might anything might have happened. I mean, they might well have seen their numbers reduced from 13 seats down to four or five.
00:28:31
Speaker
so do you have any other interesting stories from the campaign? Well, there was a lovely moment in the campaign just the day before day or so before the election where I was in Prescott Road and turned a corner and coming towards me was Harold Wilson, who had been prime minister, of course, but was a local MP on Merseyside and with a bevy of people around him and he was campaigning.
00:28:53
Speaker
And I decided I didn't want to collide with him. I turned into Shield Road and coming in that direction from along that road was Margaret Thatcher, then the leader of the opposition, with Ken Dodd, the comedian.
00:29:05
Speaker
blue tickling stick of... He was a great supporter of hers. She went off... And later, by the way, became a supporter of mine, which was was I was very pleased about. But later that day, she then went to the Littlewoods Pools...
00:29:23
Speaker
the Counting Centre, which was in the constituency. Hundreds of women ah mainly worked there. And Margaret went on to the Tannoy system to extol the virtues of conservatism and Margaret Thatcher. She won me a lot more votes that day. She didn't do well over the Tannoy system.
00:29:41
Speaker
But it was... to Someone had come up with a slogan for for me, which was on all of our posters, which was, everyone knows someone who's been helped by David Orton. And if that wasn't true, I thought that was a very risky slogan for people to have put on the posters. But if it was true, then I guessed it was probably summed up well what it was maybe that I had to...
00:30:04
Speaker
to offer. And when the votes were counted, i found I had a majority of 8,133. one hundred and thirty three It was a swing of 32%, 64% of the votes cast and briefly ah became one of those record-breaking by-elections. The Guinness Book of Records also listed me as the baby of the House and its shortest-lived member, serving for just two and a half days.
00:30:32
Speaker
Did you get any Any media opportunities for you being baby of the house? I did. I got some nice photo calls. and And also, it didn't last long, though, because ah in the general election that followed, someone pipped me, I think, by ah by a handful of of days in becoming the new baby.
Conclusion and Sponsor Acknowledgment
00:30:53
Speaker
But having been the baby of the house certainly was something that lived with me for quite a long time. i now find myself in my dotage as probably one of the longest serving members of
00:31:05
Speaker
parliament, both houses of parliament, um but but also in a debate last week, I was referred to as the most sanctioned member of parliament, now having been sanctioned by Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.
00:31:21
Speaker
And i I wonder sometimes whether the what the people of Liverpool Edge Hill would make would make of some of the things that I i became embroiled in as a result of them sending me to Westminster.
00:31:34
Speaker
Oh, wow. that's That's very interesting. Well, I found this whole conversation really interesting. So thank you very much for joining me. I really appreciate it. No, it's a pleasure, Matt. Nice to talk to you. Thank you for listening to today's episode of the Observations Podcast.
00:31:48
Speaker
If you found yourself interested in by-elections, please do listen to the rest of this series. And do follow us wherever you're listening. We're also available on YouTube at Observations Podcast. So do check us out there.
00:32:00
Speaker
If you're already listening there, please do like, comment and subscribe as it helps us greatly. My name is Matt Davis. Thank you for listening to the Observations Podcast. Thank you.
00:32:19
Speaker
The Observations podcast is being brought to you by Democracy Volunteers, the UK's leading election observation group. Democracy Volunteers is non-partisan and does not necessarily share the opinions of participants in the podcast.
00:32:33
Speaker
It brings the podcast to you to improve knowledge of elections, both national and international.