A cursory look at this week's local election results nationally have led me to believe the following:

• We have, by and large, done well in councils where we are the official opposition - especially in Labour-controlled councils
  
• We have, by and large, done poorly in situations where we are in third place or worse, or there is little Labour presence

As I am keen to stress, this is based more on gut feeling than a formal analysis. It would make a very interesting project for someone with more time than I to see if this hypothesis stands up to scrutiny.

Nevertheless, I feel I am starting to get a picture emerging - that of tactical voting against the incumbent Government based on a "kick 'em out" mentality. In places like Sheffield, "vote Lib Dem to beat Labour" has been a very potent message - even in Conservative-held Council seats. Presumably in other authorities, the Tories have benefitted from the self-same phenomenon.

In 1997, we benefitted enormously from this sort of voting - and there is surely an opportunity of equal magnitude available this time. We must take care though to defend what we have in terms of Parliamentary seats against a sadly inevitable Tory revival.

There are two important - and seemingly contradictory - lessons to learn from this:

• Squeeze the Tory vote everywhere they are in third place on the Council - even in individual Council seats that are Lib Dem vs. Tory.
• Beware the squeeze elsewhere - and where possible refute it by demonstrating that we can win!

My other - again, untested - hypothesis is that we have done significantly better in the 20% of Parliamentary seats that are important for the next general election than the remaining 80% of the country. But that remains to be seen.

Whether I'm right or wrong though, let's not forget the most important habit of all - winning! Why are you sitting here reading this rubbish? Get out there and recruit members, motivate your candidates, plan literature schedules, and sow next year's crop of Lib Dem stakeboards. We have elections to win!