The Liberal Democrats are planning to open two fronts against the Conservatives in their traditional heartlands, with a campaign focused on NHS waiting lists and a pledge to protect the pensions triple lock.
In an interview with the Observer, Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, said that the scale of support his party had been receiving from lifelong Tory voters meant that there was now no Tory seat in either the “blue wall” or the Conservatives’ rural heartlands that was safe.
The Lib Dems are in an increasingly optimistic mood as their annual conference takes place this week after a string of byelection wins, including in Chesham and Amersham, and Tiverton and Honiton. There is also mounting concern among Tories in constituencies where the Lib Dems are in second place.
Davey’s party is now honing an election campaign designed to win over liberal, pro-remain Tory voters as well as rural communities that have been out of reach to the Lib Dems for years. He said that, unlike in the run-up to previous elections, concern about the NHS and GP waiting times was a “common thread” across all the voters it was targeting.
“We just think there are more and more seats where we can do well,” he said. “The blue wall became a reality after Chesham and Amersham, and we’ve shown that that’s not a flash in the pan, both in local election results and byelections. Then, after Tiverton and Honiton, I did not say we were back in the West Country. But since then, we’ve had great elections in Dorset, great elections in Devon – and we’ve had the Somerton and Frome byelection.
“That just makes us feel that we are back in the West Country now, so I’m going straight for it. We’re taking on the Tories on two fronts: blue wall seats in Surrey and Sussex and Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire and Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire – areas where we weren’t really competitive even in the 1990s and 2000s. And we’re competitive in our old stomping grounds in the West Country.”
Davey pointed to new research suggesting that the proportion of people waiting four weeks or more for a GP appointment is three times higher in rural parts of England than in London. He is calling on the government to launch a new strategy to improve access to GPs in rural areas. Giving everyone the right to see a GP within a week will be “at the heart” of the Lib Dems’ election plans.
The party is also campaigning against altering the pensions triple lock, which has been mooted. Davey said the UK was at the “bottom of the league” in terms of pensioner incomes. His policy is designed to appeal to older Tory voters in rural seats.
Davey said the NHS had become a core issue. “Now the health service is a key dividing line. It’s the sort of bedrock of our campaigning in rural seats. This was a thread through our other byelection campaigning, and it’s the same in Mid Beds.”
He said his party would not back off from campaigning hard in the Mid Bedfordshire byelection, which takes place next month. Labour and the Lib Dems are both fighting hard for the constituency, and a poll reported by the Observer last week suggested the duel could allow the Tories to retain the seat, despite a collapse in their vote share.
With next year’s general election now on the horizon, Davey refused to say what his price would be to support a Labour minority government in the event of a hung parliament. He said he wanted to give his party more sway by winning more MPs.
“My focus before the election is that we have to first have the influence and the clout that we’ve not had for a few years,” he said. “We have got to make sure we elect as many Liberal Democrat MPs as possible. My whole strategy since becoming leader has been about that. And it’s been focused on beating Conservative MPs.”
Some Lib Dem activists are frustrated that the party has decided not to prioritise Brexit since the last election. In recent weeks, Rishi Sunak and Labour leader Keir Starmer have been more open in attempting to build bridges with the EU. Labour has said it wants regular meetings with EU leaders.
However, Davey said he was clear that an entirely new EU deal was needed, as the current arrangement was failing the UK. “I worry that these other parties are flip-flopping around on this issue,” he said. “They’re essentially tinkering at the edges. We need root-and-branch reform to our relationship with our European friends, our closest trading partners.
“We voted against the deal because we said it was a terrible one – Labour voted for it. We’ve spent all the time since then criticising the deal, arguing that you needed a comprehensive new deal that was better for our farmers, better for our economy, security, energy. We need a complete reset and a much better deal.”
