It’s four days since Rishi Sunak surprised his colleagues and announced a summer election. So far a lot of the commentary has been on how Labour’s Keir Starmer could be the big winner from that call – with the party over 20 points ahead in the polls. Yet when it comes to the threat many of the cabinet are most worried about, it is actually the Liberal Democrats. There is much chatter among ministers today over Michael Gove’s shock decision to stand down. As Tim Shipman reports in the Sunday Times, Gove was long of the view that he would hold his constituency of Surrey Heath (majority: 18,349) so long as the Tories held onto at least 150 seats. The fact he has decided not to stand after all has led to speculation that Gove may have concluded the Tories could go under that figure.
In Surrey Heath, the main challenger to the Tories is the Lib Dems. Ed Davey’s party always thought they would only take Gove’s seat on a very good night – but they have plenty of other ‘Top Tory’ targets that they view as within grasp. Earlier today, Ed Davey kicked off his party’s campaign in Chichester alongside the Liberal Democrat candidate Jess Brown-Fuller – where the party hopes to claim the scalp of Education Secretary Gillian Keegan. Others they are aiming for include the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in Surrey and perhaps Jacob Rees-Mogg in North East Somerset. The worry is that if the campaign goes pear-shaped (and Tory MPs are not inspired so far), all these seats could start to fall into Ed Davey’’ hands.
So, how do the Liberal Democrats plan to make all this a reality? In the past, the mistake the party has made is to aim too high in terms of the number of seats they are targeting – and thereby spread resources too thinly and underperform. Take the then-leader Jo Swinson in 2019, who said she could be prime minister and then lost her own seat by a handful of votes after focussing on trying to make gains elsewhere. Under Davey, the focus is very much on a finite number of seats – primarily in Tory southern heartlands. More than two million leaflets will be distributed across the blue wall as part of their efforts.
The biggest challenge the Liberal Democrats think they have here is getting out the message that they are best placed to oust the Tories – rather than Labour. Talking about his seat – Godalming and Ash – Jeremy Hunt said it was one of the only times he would encourage voters to back Labour. His point being it would split the vote and help him defend it. The Lib Dems plan to take out many adverts trying to make this point to voters – but it is obviously harder to land when the polls suggest Labour is so far ahead and heading to a super-majority. A large chunk of the cabinet will be hoping this means voters won’t know who to back to get them out.
Comments