Election campaigns are exhausting.

As an MP, I feel pretty well qualified to espouse the topic. For weeks on end, every spare moment is accounted for. You knock on doors, deliver leaflets, attend community events, answer messages, post on social media, put up garden posters, and try to keep up with everything else that continues in the background.

During the white heat of the campaign, there is always one more street to canvass and one more email to answer.

That pressure doesn’t suddenly begin when the starting gun is fired. Most of the people who stood in this year’s local elections had already spent years working in their communities.

Some were experienced councillors. Others were standing for the first time. But almost all had already given up evenings and weekends to help residents, support local charities and try to make our area a little better.

On 7 May, the stakes were unusually high. In fact, it’s my belief that these elections were the most consequential local elections for our area since the 1960s - and perhaps even longer than that.

As regular readers will know, local government in Surrey is being turned upside down. Surrey Heath Borough Council, Woking Borough Council, Guildford Borough Council and the other district and borough councils are due to disappear next year, along with Surrey County Council.

In their place will come a new unitary authority covering West Surrey and a sizeable chunk of South Middlesex. Those elected this month will shape that new council from the outset. That is a daunting responsibility.

The new authority is expected to inherit around £4 billion of debt and a £150m budget deficit, while running some of the most important services that we rely on as a community: social care, special educational needs provision, roads, libraries and waste collection.

It will need councillors with sound judgement, a strong work ethic and a willingness to make enormously difficult decisions.

On 7 May, like many local residents, I cast my vote for the candidates I believed were best equipped for that job.

My own election day started at 7am at polling stations across Surrey Heath, talking to voters and campaign volunteers throughout the day. After the polls closed at 10pm, I headed into London for a “through-the-night” round of television and radio interviews, charting the early results as they came in.

Then, after a couple of hours sleep, I was back in Camberley for the count itself.

For the Liberal Democrats, it was a very good night. In Surrey Heath, we won 11 of the 12 available seats. I know those councillors well, and I am confident they will work hard for the communities they represent.

But, at election time, I always think about those who did not win.

Behind every candidate is a great deal of effort and, usually, a fair amount of hope. There are volunteers who deliver leaflets in the rain, family members who tolerate weeks of disruption, and candidates who put themselves before the public knowing they may well fall short.

That takes courage and resilience - especially now in our febrile and even hostile political atmosphere. I know because I have been there myself.

In 2019, I lost in my first ever election. Like every candidate who has put heart and soul into a campaign, I clearly remember the sense of disappointment.

That is why I have genuine respect for everyone who puts themselves forward for public office, regardless of party.

Our democracy depends on ordinary people being willing to step up, make their case and accept the verdict of the electorate. In a world where democratic politics is curiously trapped between either being taken for granted or fuelled by outrage, that is something worth appreciating.

Win or lose, everyone who stood in these elections played a part in keeping the very best elements of our democratic traditions alive - even as we need to guard against the hidden forces that would seek to derail us.