That’s the question I pose in a piece I’ve got on Liberal Democrat Voice today:

To start, three pieces of promising news: in six of the last seven annual rounds of local elections, the number of Liberal Democrat councillors has gone up. Secondly, the change in our vote in Crewe & Nantwich was pretty much the same as in Dudley West, South East Staffordshire and Wirral South – the three big Labour gains from the Conservatives in the run-up to 1997 – a general election at which we then made huge gains in the numbers of MPs we had.

Add in to that the steady but very clear improvement in our poll ratings since Nick Clegg became leader, and there’s plenty of cause for quiet optimism about our electoral prospects – provded we put in the hard work necessary.

But we shouldn’t be complacent that just any sort of hard work will deliver the right results, and there are two signs in that news that we need, in particular, to broaden our strength across the country…

You can read the full piece here.