Breckland and South West Norfolk: General Election Results 2024

Election campaigns are hard work, and this one has been no exception. Our volunteers have honed their skills at targeted leafleting, canvassing, member communications, and much more besides, targeting campaign days across our area and beyond to get the best results for Liberal Democrat priorities and voters. We're proud of what we've achieved, and we're fired up for future campaigns ahead.

In Mid Norfolk, our candidate Stuart Howard came fourth with 3,126 votes (6.8%): in South West Norfolk, Josie Ratcliffe was fifth with 2,618 votes (5.9%). This was an election where all parties were heavily focused on targeting, the Liberal Democrats included, and therefore a challenging one for local parties who did not already have close second-place finishes or target statuses to focus on. In these circumstances, the fact that we held our deposits in both of the seats in our area is a real testament to the hard campaigning work we did and to how many people in our area really believe in Liberal Democrat priorities on social care, a reformed democracy, tackling climate change, and more besides. In South West Norfolk, voters switching from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats may have been a factor in the Conservatives' defeat, with Liz Truss losing the seat for her party for the first time since the 1950s.

As well as being heartened by the fact that thousands of people in our area backed Liberal Democrat candidates despite the squeeze of the national campaigns, we were delighted to have also supported the election of a Liberal Democrat MP in Norfolk for the first time since 2017, with North Norfolk returning to the Liberal Democrat fold and our 2019 Mid Norfolk candidate, Steffan Aquarone, now a fantastic local member of parliament for the constituency. Considerable effort from across our Breckland & South West Norfolk volunteer team went into helping support Steff's campaign, and we're extremely happy to have him as one of the astonishing number of new liberal members of parliament - with tens of new faces giving us a Liberal Democrat party of 72 MPs across Great Britain, plus one from our sister party Alliance in Northern Ireland.

This was an election fought to make sure an increasingly erratic and out-of-touch Conservative administration would be out of office, and the results in Norfolk and elsewhere bear that out, with the Conservatives now only holding three of the nine-and-a-half seats in the county (Waveney Valley crosses the border with Suffolk). With the county council elections coming up next year, we have a real chance to persuade people across Norfolk that it's time to seek more liberal and progressive alternatives in local government as well. There's a great deal of work to be done, but this election has been a great success for Liberal Democrat values and a great jump forward towards the next steps both here in Norfolk and across the country. We're excited for what comes next.