Nick Tyrone Nick Tyrone

Why the Lib Dems could soon cause trouble for Boris

(Getty images)

Much of the focus when it comes to ‘Super Thursday’ centres on whether or not the Tories can pull off an electoral coup by snatching Hartlepool from Labour.  But the Lib Dems’ role in the drama has largely gone unnoticed – and a good result for Ed Davey’s party could spell the start of trouble for Boris Johnson.

Labour needs to hold onto Hartlepool. It’s really that simple. To lose the seat, particularly to a Conservative party that has been in power for eleven years, would be devastating. Starmer is also under pressure in the local elections. To put this into perspective, Labour lost around 400 seats in the areas being contested on Thursday during the Corbyn era. This means that even just to get back to level pegging with the Ed Miliband period, Labour need to gain hundreds of local seats – and no one is suggesting they are about to do that.

So it seems Labour are destined to underperform by any realistic measure this week. Boris, then, will get the glory and a bad set of local results for Labour will take a huge amount of heat off the Prime Minister. But hold on: things might not be so simple for the Tories.

For once, they were living up to their name as the ‘liberal’ party

When the Lib Dems became the only nationwide party to vote against the extension of the government’s emergency Covid powers recently – with Labour voting with the Conservatives on the issue – the Lib Dems were playing smart politics for a change. For once, they were living up to their name as the ‘liberal’ party. Since then, they have even started to throw some mud at Labour, at least on leaflets and in emails to supporters. This is something that hadn’t happened much since Starmer’s ascension to the Labour leadership. Until now, Davey has largely focused his fire on the Tories.

But while this is a welcome shift in Lib Dem campaigning, will Davey’s party actually get any credit from voters? One of the problems for them is that there appears to be a correlation between those who are anti-lockdown and people who were passionately pro-Brexit.

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