Congradulate Iain on his victory, and learn a little about how politicians get elected on the local level. This isn't a blog written by a bunch of paid flaks - it's the real McCoy!

The election day battle started around 6:30 on Thursday morning, when a resilient bunch of volunteers went around Romsey delivering "Good Mornings": leaflets reminding people about to go out to work that today's the day to vote, supplemented with some encouraging soundbites about the Liberal Democrat candidate. So far as I was concerned, polling day began very well indeed: I was scheduled to do one of these hellishly early delivery rounds, involving getting out of bed at about 5 am, but I was informed the night before that another activist had volunteered to do my route, giving me a very welcome couple more hours in bed.

Candidates aren't obliged to look smart, but I've never been one to pass up a chance to tart myself up, so I got my sharpest suit on and strode purposefully down to our campaign headquarters. For the next twelve hours I was under the dictatorial control of my agent, partly because he's a formidable campaign manager, but mainly because there's no time for lengthy meetings on polling day: you need to have one guy in charge.