Hello and welcome to The Rondale, a podcast from Politics Home. I'm your host, Alan Tolhurst.

We're a party conference season in full swing. For the next three weeks, we're going to bring

you some special episodes of the podcast covering all the action, including live shows and interviews,

starting this week with Liberal Democrats. After the most successful election

ever, returning a whopping 72 MPs last month, their event in Brighton these past few days

has been something of a victory lap, but focus is already turning to what the party can actually

achieve in the face of a Labour government with such a large majority, what their ambitions are

in the future, and how they might hold on to those seats next time round, having seen their support collapse before.

Joining me to discuss all that and more, I'm delighted to say we have not one but two Liberal Democrat MPs.

Firstly, Miner & Wilson, the party's education, children and family spokesperson, as well as

Danny Chambers, the new member for Winchester.

Alongside them, I have Patrick English, Director of Political Analytics at the pollsters

you gov, as well as my colleague here at Paul Home, reporter Zoe Crowther, who was down in Brighton

for us covering the conference.

So, Mania, I'll start with you.

You first elected in 2019, which was a pretty bad election for the party. You lost, your leader lost their seat. What was kind of the difference this time run? What was the kind of the atmosphere like at a party conference of such an amazing election? Well, obviously, the difference is a huge one. We got 11 MPs elected in 2019 and 72 this time. I don't get tired of saying

the number. It brings me such joy. I think Wendy Chamberlain was handing out badges with 72. That number

is going to be forever etched into your Liberal Democrat history now, yeah? 72 and 24 is indeed.

So it is a very special number of which, you know,

Danny obviously is one and delighted to have him as part of our expanded team.

And you asked what the atmosphere was like at party conference.

I mean, utterly jubilant, as you can imagine, as you said in your intro,

...