Soldier, sailor, filmmaker – meet the new Lib Dem MPs

Everywhere you go in the party conference centre at Brighton you keep seeing the same number – 72.

That’s how many MPs the Liberal Democrats now have – and they have been celebrating that fact all week.

It’s a dramatic increase on the 15 MPs they had before the election and represents a record number of seats for the party.

The newbies come from all walks of life. Some have followed the traditional route into politics through local government and backroom roles.

Others were not expecting to get elected and have had to hastily rearrange their lives and hand in their notice at work.

A few have fascinating back stories…

About two decades before Dr Roz Savage became the Lib Dem MP for the South Cotswolds, she wrote her own obituary.

As her Methodist minister father neared the end of his own life, she took stock of her own and realised the “salary and status” of her high-flying management consultant job was making her miserable.

She ditched her job and her marriage and set off in a boat to become the first woman to row solo around the world, across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans.

Savage explained she had intended to keep herself entertained with a stereo, but it broke early into the trip and left her alone with her thoughts for months on end.

“That was brutal,” she recalls. “I definitely went to some dark places.

“I’m actually quite scared of the ocean – it’s a really unforgiving environment and if you get separated from your boat it’s game over.

“But I just kept on not quitting and it ended up being transformational – it’s what gave me the courage to stand for parliament.”

Now the 56-year-old backbencher has the chance to make a name for herself in a different way, as she was picked third in the Private Members Bill ballot so will be able to bring forward her own draft law and has a better chance than most of seeing it adopted by the government.

Thousands of people have been in touch asking her to back causes that mean a lot to them – from sewage leaks, to climate change, and assisted dying – and she’s set up a spreadsheet to try and help decide on one to take action on next month.

Well-travelled, speaking multiple languages, and with a military background, some might say Mike Martin has a touch of former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown about him.

Martin spent time in Afghanistan as a political officer in the Army, working with the Taliban “and an unbelievable cast of characters”.

After a stint at the Foreign Office and with a global charity, he bought a small sailing boat and travelled around the world with his wife, getting married on the deck of the same craft.

They lived in Australia and Fiji over the pandemic before returning to his wife’s home town of Tunbridge Wells with their baby daughter.

Even having spread his wings so wide, he insists Westminster doesn’t feel parochial, describing politics as “the place to get things done”, moving “from the tactical level to strategic”.

The general election was a Midsummer Night’s Dream for the new Liberal Democrat MP for William Shakespeare.

Manuela Perteghella became the first Liberal to win Stratford-on-Avon since 1906, and the first female MP to represent the constituency.

She said her first few months in the job have been “exciting and daunting at the same time”.

Her predecessor was the former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi who, she says, hasn’t been in touch since she was elected.

She wants to focus on fuel poverty, special educational needs provision, housing, and ending sewage discharges.

Born in Italy, Perteghella has lived in the UK for more than 30 years and holds a doctorate in literature and translation.

Fittingly, she studied Shakespeare’s plays during her PhD and now she’s writing her own political script.

What Shakespeare play best sums up Lib Dem conference?

“I think All’s Well That Ends Well,” she says.

Steff Aquarone still can’t quite believe he’s the MP for North Norfolk.

“I didn’t expect to be elected this year until maybe a few weeks before the day,” he says.

“But I thought it would take two or three electoral cycles to win back the seat.”

In a seat formerly held by Lib Dem minister Norman Lamb, Aquarone ousted a Tory MP, winning with a majority of 2,585.

Before entering politics, he was involved in the film industry and technology start-ups.

Crowd-sourcing is his thing. For example, the funding for Tortoise in Love, a romantic comedy he made with a friend, was entirely crowd-sourced from the Oxfordshire village where it was set.

In the village – which Aquarone points out is within a Lib Dem-held constituency – “people still talk about it fondly”, he says.

His priorities are health and sewage discharges, issues that he campaigned on ahead of the general election.

At 25, Joshua Reynolds is the youngest Lib Dem MP in the House of Commons.

In his Maidenhead constituency, he replaced one of the most senior MPs in Theresa May, the former Conservative prime minister who stood down ahead of the general election.

The pair met recently, and May had some advice for her successor.

“It’s about being local and being active and standing up for those keys issues that are important to you,” Reynolds said. “That was the key message that she tried to get across.”

Born and raised in Maidenhead, Reynolds studied business and management studies before working as a manager for a supermarket chain.

He said he’s still paying off his student loan and doesn’t seem to resent his party’s U-turn on scrapping tuition fees. The Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government raised the cap on university tuition fees in England to £9,000 a year in 2012.

He said “the party was punished over three general elections” for that decision.

A councillor for several years before entering Parliament, he said he got into politics in school.

But surveys show young people like him are less likely to vote in elections.

Reynolds said politicians need to “talk about the issues that matter to them”.

“The messages and the core policies are exactly the same,” he said. “It’s how we deliver those core policies that attracts young people.”