The Liberal Democrat Woking MP, Will Forster, has admitted that his historic defeat of  the Conservatives was partly due to tactical voting.

In his victory speech last week, Mr Forster said: “I want to thank those Labour and Green supporters who voted tactically in this election; I know you lent me your vote yesterday.”

He polled 24,019 votes against Jonathan Lord’s 12,773.

While it seems many Labour voters did switch, with Ese Erheriene’s 4,444 votes being nearly half that of her party’s candidate in 2019, the Green Party vote went up slightly.

It seems two key factors in the result were former Conservative voters abstaining, with a drop in Mr Lord’s tally by 13,623 votes, and some switching to Richard Barker of Reform UK, who came third with 4,888 votes.

Another element was the decrease in the Conservatives’ campaign power after the party lost all its borough council seats.