We’ve run some cracking results late on Thursday nights in the last 8 months but this one is pretty amazing even by those standards.

Last May, in the Sandhill ward in Sunderland, we got, to put it euphemistically, a modest 90 votes. Labour got 1229.

And on Thursday, this happened:

Sandhill (Sunderland) result:
LDEM: 45.0% (+41.5)
LAB: 25.0% (-29.9)
UKIP: 18.7% (-7.2)
CON: 10.0% (-5.7)
GRN: 1.3% (+1.3)

I’m sorry. What?!

Yes, you read it right.

Liberal Democrat GAIN Sandhill (Sunderland) from Labour.

Bowsers. Congratulations, Cllr Stephen O’Brien and your hardy team for running one hell of a polling day operation in the snow.

And there could be more good news on the way.

Lib Dems also expected to gain Gade Valley (Three Rivers) from the Tories. Result should be due soon.

This is a ward which did have 3 Liberal Democrat councillors in 2014 but we lost a seat to the Tories in 2015.

There’s only two by-elections. Could we get a clean sweep?

And it is. The result has just been confirmed and it means that Three Rivers is once again a majority Lib Dem Council. Brilliant work by Alex Michaels and the superb Liberal Democrat team in Three Rivers.

Here’s the result. Normally a 24% increase in the vote would be spectacular but tonight it is slightly overshadowed.

Gade Valley (Three Rivers) result:
LDEM: 60.9% (+24.0)
CON: 19.1% (-22.9)
LAB: 11.6% (-9.6)
UKIP: 6.7% (+6.7)
GRN: 1.8% (+1.8)

So, two very different results. An amazing gain that few would have expected from Labour in the north. UKIP’s vote fell by a third, too. In contrast, we are also doing very well and re-gaining support in our areas of strength. Not bad for a bitterly cold Winter’s day’s work.

UPDATE: It’s been such a good night that the leader has had something to say about it:

“We finished 2016 winning by-elections and tonight we have shown that the Lib Dem Fightback is going from strength to strength. Since May 2015 we have now gained over 20 council seats and won a parliamentary by-election in Richmond Park.

Thanks to the hard work of local campaigners and great candidates we have gained two new council seats and control of a council.

Tonight we gained seats from both the Conservatives and from Labour. People up and down the country want to see an open, tolerant and united UK. It is the Liberal Democrats who are standing up and representing them, we are the real opposition to this Conservative Brexit government.”

Published on Liberal Democrat Voice By Caron Lindsay (Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron’s Musings) | Thu 12th January 2017 – 11:07 pm

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