THE result in the recent by-election in Romsey was an appalling disaster for the Tories, who lost ten percent of their vote in their top target seat.

I challenged Tom Spring-Smyth to explain this away, and as he couldn't he tried to divert attention by changing the subject.

It's an old trick, but it only works if your opponent fails to notice that that's what you've done.

If he only reads articles if they're written by journalists opposed to the Liberal Democrats, it's no wonder he thinks our party is failing - by-election wins notwithstanding, and including three more last week just over the border, in Thatcham near Newbury, where the Lib Dems won the lot and that included a gain from the Tories.

If 'finances are thin' (whatever that means), the party budget nowadays is hundreds of times bigger than when we had six MPs and barely a handful of paid staff in London but now we have 63 and every MP employs more than that in his own offices - expenditure rises to meet income, as they say.

Against this, we have the Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, being questioned about donations to fund his private office, and Labour getting into all sorts of hot water over donations from a property developer in the North-East which both he and they tried to cover up.

Party membership is indeed falling, but that is also true of the Conservatives, Labour and most political parties on the continent.

Fashions are changing, and many people prefer direct action to joining parties.

If our committee structure is cumbersome it's because we're a democratic party which tries to allow members to decide policy, and if some of them are demanding or quarrelsome this is merely the cut and thrust of debate, as I know from experience.

Finally, the pompous rhetorical question: what are the Lib Dems for? Well, Labour and the Tories voted for an illegal war in Iraq, and every one of our 63 MPs turned up to vote against it.

Labour and the Tories favour compulsory ID cards, which Lib Dems oppose as they would be liable to forgery by the very people they are supposed to protect us from and would be a pointless infringement of individual liberty.

The Lib Dems are a pro-European party, Labour and the Tories are deeply split.

I could go on, but these three good, solid aspects of policy will suffice to explain our continued strength.

Mr Spring-Smyth claims to have put 'an excellent question' which I can't answer. But I have, and in so doing given yet another reason why people support us: when asked a straight question, we give a straight answer.

So now, before we forget where this correspondence started, can we go back to my question to Mr Spring-Smyth: how do you explain the Tory failing in the Romsey by-election last month?

MARTIN KYRLE, chairman, Chandler's Ford Liberal Democrats.