Year Honours. In the 1997 general election he oversaw the party's target-seat campaign, which resulted in the Liberal Democrats nearly doubling its number of MPs from 26 to 46. In 2001 and 2005, with Tim Razzall (Baron Razzall) as Campaign Chair and Charles Kennedy as Leader, he also directed the Liberal Democrats' general-election campaigns, which further increased the number of Lib Dem MPs respectively to 52 and 62, the largest total of Liberal or Liberal Democrat MPs since 1923. He was the party's Chief Executive between 2003 and 2009. During his employment by the Liberal Democrats at a national level, he was credited with winning 13 parliamentary by-elections for the party (11 gains and 2 holds), out of a total of 74 by-elections held—a success rate of 17.5%. The Eastbourne by-election in 1990 was claimed by Rennard as rescuing the Liberal Democrats from their very weak position following the merger of the Liberal Party and the SDP, and saw a 16,923 Conservative majority become a Liberal Democrat majority of 4,550. The by-election followed a major row between Rennard and Paddy Ashdown over the party leader's initial opposition to the Liberal Democrats fighting the by-election. A by-election in Christchurch during July 1993 saw the Liberal Democrats gain the seat from the Conservatives by the largest swing (35%) against any British government since 1918. Former party leader Charles Kennedy has described Rennard as "a quite extraordinary figure in British politics", while his predecessor Paddy Ashdown praised Rennard as "a formidable and widely-respected practitioner of political campaigning across all parties". Iain Dale said in an interview in Total Politics (June 2011) that Rennard "is probably the most formidable and feared political campaigner of the last 20 years." Concerning the 2001 general election, Andrew Stunell, a friend of Rennard's, is reported as having said: "Last time people didn't follow Chris [Rennard's] instructions and the difference between those who did and who didn't – like in the Isle of Wight [which the party lost] – was very clear. The message got through." Rennard has claimed credit for pioneering the successful Liberal Democrat election strategy of claiming narrow majorities when in second or even third place and ruthlessly squeezing third-party votes in Tory–Lib Dem and Labour–Lib Dem marginals; although this technique has been in use by the Liberal Party's campaigns teams since at least October 1974, when Rennard was 14 years old. Later posts Rennard served