Yesterday’s Telegraph has a report that the Liberal Democrats believe that they can win or win back some seats currently held by the Tories.
The seats mentioned are Oxford West and Abingdon, Winchester and St Albans. These seats have all selected their candidates, Layla Moran, Jackie Porter and Sandy Walkington. I could also add Richmond Park, where Robin Meltzer is working hard, campaigning against Heathrow expansion with the help of two neighbouring cabinet ministers. In Harrogate we have Helen Flynn and in Newton Abbot and Truro and Falmouth, Richard Younger-Ross and Simon Rix are in place. All these candidates are in place and are working very hard, doing an unprecedented level of on the ground campaigning this far out from an election.
They are being helped by the fact that the Tories are very obviously not the cuddly bunch of teddy bears they pretended to be in 2010, with “Husky Boy” Cameron reportedly denouncing all the “green crap” recently. Their attitude on immigration will also not help retain those voters who switched to them in 2010, thinking that they had changed.
Some Tories are being spooked by this as the Telegraph says:
The Lib Dems’ plans have caused concern among some Tories. More than 20 Conservative MPs attended a private meeting with Mr Cameron last month to express concerns about his shift in tone over the environment.
One Conservative minister said of the Lib Dems: “They are good at running targeted local campaigns. They’ve got huge problems nationally but we shouldn’t write them off – they could well take some of our seats.”
A Liberal Democrats source is quoted as saying:
These are places where some people voted Conservative in 2010 because they liked what David Cameron had to say about things like the environment. Now he’s abandoned the green agenda, there is every reason to think they could come to us.
Cameron’s problem is that he can’t now unsay all the macho, “nasty party” things he said to try to stop the drift to UKIP. He’s made himself a bed with a core vote mattress that he has to lie in even if he wakes up every morning in agony.
This election is going to be a difficult one for the Liberal Democrats, no doubt about that, but writing us off now would be daft. The party has made a lot of progress this year in getting the infrastructure in place to fight the 2015 election. Tim Gordon, as Chief Executive and his deputy Hilary Stephenson have done the nuts and bolts on the ground stuff. Ryan Coetzee has been developing the message, our offer to the voters and getting that embedded in all that we do. Paddy Ashdown is being typically fearsome, ensuring the work gets done in our key seats. We’re far too far out to predict anything accurately but our preparations are going in an encouraging direction. We showed what the party could do when we gritted our teeth and got on with it in Eastleigh. We need to do the same in our key seats.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
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28 Comments
“We showed what the party could do when we gritted our teeth and got on with it in Eastleigh. We need to do the same in our key seats.”
I’d advise you to try not to duplicate that 14-point drop in your share of the vote in your key seats.
Winchester is a seat which was taken last time by a slightly dim Tory who has proved to be anti HS2, opposed to wind farms, in favour of coming out of the EU, i.e typical of the UKIP wing of the Conservative Party. That at least means clear orange water between the LibDems and the Tories, but it also means that we need to be quite clear to the electorate about those differences in the hope that the Labour supporters who have previously voted for us will continue to vote tactically and to discourage the Greens from fielding a candidate. Unbelievably we have the first female candidate for a major party in the constituency since the 1950s. One major unknown is whether there will be a Tory/UKIP deal before the election, and if there isn’t whether that would mean a UKIP candidate taking more votes from the Tories than from us – something which clearly did not happen at the County elections in May.
It’s not just the South where we can take seats from the Tories. Up in the North there are seats which we can & should take from them – as I intend to prove.
Tony – I hope our candidate for Winchester is to the left of Mark Oaten, at least on economic matters!
If we play our cards right, we may even be able to save our seats where Labour is the main contender by mopping up more of the Conservative vote. Obviously this is only relevant in a few places, but it could stem our overall losses, nonetheless.
Hope the candidates do manage unseat both Nicola Blackwood and Steve Brine.
But to take seats from the Tories you need to attract (or hold) the votes of 2010 Labour supporters. Why should they switch to the Lib Dems to “get the Tories out” in 2015 when the Lib Dems have just spent the last five years “keeping the Tories in”.? Why? Some posters on here just don’t seem to understand that many voters on the centre left (like myself) who were enticed by Nick Clegg in 2010 are determined that we won’t give him our votes a second time simply to decide to throw his weight yet again behind the Tory party. Even if a Tory MP got in as a result, at least I wouldn’t experience again the genuine anger of feeling like my vote had been conned out of me. (I don’t feel “conned” is too strong a word – that’s how I felt. The opinion polls suggest millions of others did likewise). I will probably now get a shower of abuse for saying all this, but the anger I felt in May 2010 is real – and I won’t give Nick Clegg a second opportunity to put me in that position… And there’s also a matter of strategy. If the Lib Dems ARE to hold seats against a Conservative challenger (let alone GAIN seats! Delusion is a terrible thing!) they need to – somehow – attract the support of erstwhile Labour supporters. Can someone explain how Nick Clegg’s increasingly vitriolic attacks on the Labour Party (and only comparatively muted attacks on the Tories) help in that regard?
Electoral Calculus is predicting that the Tories will take 17 seats from the Lib Dems in 2015:-
http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/gainloss.html
The voters don’t expect anything other than ‘nasty’ from the Tories, but we did have higher expectations of the Lib Dems. Who would have believed that the Lib Dems would facilitate the most right-wing government in living memory, allowing Iain Duncan Smith full rein to inflict misery on the poor, sick and disabled, necessitating 500,000 of them to require help from foodbanks? The Lib Dems could have pulled the plug on this government from hell, and unless they do very soon (and replace Clegg as leader with Tim Farron), the party will suffer a severe reversal in 2015.
Yes, Lib Dems are good at holding on to their existing seats, but to talk of winning more is just delusion. All the polling and parliamentary by-election evidence suggests that the Lib Dem vote will drop more than the Tory vote, and why would any Labour voter be minded to vote tactically for a party which has supported the destruction of the NHS and other hideous Tory policies? Clegg made it clear some time ago that he doesn’t welcome left-inclined voters, and Danny Alexander’s constant blaming of Labour for the bankers’ global credit crunch is hardly likely to win them over.
Labour seems bound to win the 2015 election. It’s hard to conceive of anyone who didn’t fall for Cameron’s lies, and promises he had no intention of keeping, switching their vote to the Tories next time. It’s equally hard to conceive of those on the left who were disillusioned with Labour in 2010 voting for the Lib Dems again.
“If we play our cards right, we may even be able to save our seats where Labour is the main contender by mopping up more of the Conservative vote.”
You have only to look at what’s been happening in local by-elections to see how little chance there is of that happening.
I fear that may be a little optimistic in respect of Richmond Park – the demographics have been moving against us there in the last 20 years (we now hold only 5 out of 33 Council seats in the constituency), and Zac Goldsmith is a shrewd populist who has cornered our market on Heathrow and green issues and has a bottomless pit of cash to apply to his political career.
Ivan White is either much youger than I or has a shorter memory. The ” most right-wing government in living memory” was the Thatcher government of the 1980s. Say what you like about the coalition, and there are plenty of Lib Dems biting their tongues, things would have been worse without us. As for Labour winning in 2015, I just cannot see Milliband E getting into Downing Street without a coalition. Regardless of his policies he just doesn’t cut it as a PM the way Cameron does enough of the time.
Montgomery has. selected Jane Dodds. Although the constituency reacted bitterly against Lembit and then was let down by Mick Bates in the Welsh Assembly elections , we have held the seat since 1880 with only one 4 year break. Liberalism is in the soil and the soul as well as focus leaflets.
I repeat that this is the most right-wing government in living memory. Even Thatcher didn’t dare to dismantle the NHS or destroy the welfare state in the way that Iain Duncan Smith and Esther McVey are being allowed to do by the Lib Dems. Even Thatcher didn’t send vans around telling immigrants to ‘go home’.
How could things have been worse without the Lib Dems? Yes, you made the Tories increase the starting point for income tax, but you also allowed them to increase VAT, which hits the poor the hardest – and as the very poor don’t pay income tax anyway, you’ve allowed the Tories to make them worse off.
People who like this hideous government will vote Tory, the rest will go somewhere else – to UKIP if they are anti-EU or to Labour if their main concern is to remove Cameron and his cronies from power. Many of those who voted Lib Dem in 2010 thought they were supporting a libertarian party to the left of Labour which would “say goodbye to broken promises”. Instead they got £9,000 tuition fees and a gagging bill. Do you seriously think they will vote for you again?
Ivan, this is the most right wing Labour opposition in my extensive lifetime. What I think we have to accept is that politics generally HAS moved to the right, for everyone, even the Greens.
” Regardless of his policies he just doesn’t cut it as a PM the way Cameron does enough of the time.”
Where’s Cameron excelled then?
@Ivan White
I repeat that this is the most right-wing government in living memory.”
Repeating it doesn’t make it any more true, does it? It plainly, clearly isn’t.
We’ve increased the amount of tax paid by the rich. Not very right wing, is it?
We’ve increased capital gains tax on the rich. Not very right wing.
We’ve cut taxes for the poor and pushed more money towards educating children from poor families? Are you getting the picture now?
Ivan, you are just plain old wrong. WRONG. So please don’t bother repeating that whole “most right wing” thing here, because it doesn’t have any valid basis in fact.
RC, I don’t know that I would go as far as to suggest that this is the ‘most right wing govt ever’, but it is, nevertheless, an extremely right wing administration. The demonisation of the poor has been really appalling. I know this is mainly the handiwork of IDS/Grant Schapps et al but the Lib Dems are still rubbing shoulders with the perpetrators round the cabinet table. The trebling of tuition fees, the increasing privatisation of parts of the NHS, the bedroom tax – all these things can be legitimately described as right wing.The constant focus on bogus benefit seekers while cutting top rate icome tax by 10p in the pound for those earning over £150K per year leaves a very unpleasant taste in my mouth. As a Liberal Democrat, it ought to leave an unpleasant taste in your mouth too. By all means trumpet the (very limited) concessions gained by the Lib Dems, but to deny this is a very right wing govt is to deny the evidence of your own eyes. That said, I hope you have a very happy New Year.
Let’s pick those Tories off one by one and take back their seats. And don’t forget Labour (currently) seated in Lib Dem seats. The policies are what matter not the sound-bites from the “big parties”. Organize and win back!
I am reasonably sure that if the LibDems were not part of this government but it had done all the same things I would not be thinking it was the most right-wing in living memory. Nor is it (another nostrum of the left) the most incompetent government ever. The coalition has done a lot of things that have made me angry, and I do not like the drift of the party under Nick Clegg’s helmsmanship, but it has seen us through three and a half difficult years. I’m reading David Kynaston’s book “Modernity Britain: 1957-1959″: at the equivalent point then in the electoral cycle the feeling was that Labour was”bound to” win the next election, but the economy began to come right, unemployment fell, and people generally started to feel better off and more optimistic, and the Tories won in 1959 with a substantial majority. I know that there are a number of metrics which ‘prove’ that it is most unlikely that the Tories can win in 2015, but remember the adage, “Oppositions don’t win elections, Governments lose them”. I don’t get the sense that the coalition is losing the next election, and Labour certainly isn’t doing anything to contradict that saying. Whether the LibDems will get any of the credit from the electorate for steering the country into calmer economic waters is another matter: somehow I doubt it.
@theakes
If you believe that politics has moved to the right for everyone, then logically you must agree that this is the most right-wing government in living memory?
@RC
What a comedian you are! Saying that I’m wrong and getting so excited that you repeat it in bold type doesn’t make you right, far from it.
Wholesale privatisation of almost everything in sight – even including police dog handlers – is right-wing. The fragmentation of the state education system with free schools is right-wing. The dismantling of the welfare state is right -wing. The erosion of workers’ rights concerning redundancy and unfair dismissal is right-wing. Just about everything that Theresa May does is right-wing and should make Lib Dems cringe. Thatcher was very right-wing, but this government has taken her policies even further to the right.
You’ve reduced the top rate of tax from 50% to 45%, helping the rich. Osborne has fought with the EU to protect bankers’ bonuses, that’s his priority and it’s right-wing. At the same time, the bedroom tax has been imposed on the poor and disabled, that’s right-wing. The very poor have never earned enough to pay income tax, but they do pay VAT which, despite Tory promises and those Lib Dem ‘bombshell’ posters, has been increased. Oxfam has said that we’re returning to Dickensian levels of poverty, and that’s because of the extreme right-wing policies of this ghastly government.
I’m surprised that your party has any members left, when its leadership has gone along with many policies which are directly opposite to the philosophy with which it wooed the electorate in 2010. You must all be in awe of the Tories and suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
So to sum up that long comment, Ivan, you’re saying this is a government that has implemented the Labour manifesto, but with a higher rate of tax on the well-paid and a lower rate of tax on the low-paid?
To get back to the thrust of the article – lets be extremely generous and assume the Lib Dems are not heading for near wipe out in 2015. So we win a handful of seats off the tories largely because of local issues, local campaigning, tory incompetance at a local level and UKIP taking more votes from the Tories in some seats. Seats won almost despite the fact we are Lib Dems rather than because we are Lib Dems are not a secure basis for any future election. To be honest I can’t think of many seats the Lib Dems have lost and then won back quickly – Tauton is one, Rochdale another – but most places we lose the MP we lose casework, funding, publicity, patronage and the other party gains all those advantages – it is very difficult. As it is if we can’t win the seats we hold, then we won’t win many we don’t.
@Ivan White :
“Electoral Calculus is predicting that the Tories will take 17 seats from the Lib Dems in 2015”
Nobody with any genuine sense about matters electoral treats ‘Electoral Calculas’ predictions at all seriously.
I’m eighteen, and in the next election I’m going to tell all my friends who could have been LibDems to not bother voting. And if they do vote, they should vote for the Greens or the Monster party. Not that it matters, but here in Surrey the competition is between the LibDems and the Tories. Labour is minuscule in comparison.
I could have voted for you. On paper your opinions line up with mine in a lot of ways: green, civil libertarian, etc. But in practice, people know that what they read in the bright and cheery pamphlets will be totally reversed if you ever get power again. More so than labour, and I’m pretty far left.
My generation voted for you because you were against tuition fees; then you weren’t. My generation voted for you because you were against the snooper’s charter; then you weren’t, and even defended breaking into a newspaper office to smash up computers. My generation voted for you because you didn’t bash immigrants and the poor; then you did anyway.
How on Earth could anyone ever believe anything you state ever again? Which is why I’ll tell my mates at school and in my life not to bother. I can be damn persuasive. But if I give you my vote because I want to vote for the Tories even less, you’ll take my vote as vindication, or as support. You’ll run with it, and pretend that my choice was not entirely negative. You’ll say that my vote was for you, not against the Tories.
So no. I don’t believe you. I’ll make sure that nobody else believe you either, or Labour, or the Tories.
@ Ivan – “You’ve reduced the top rate of tax from 50% to 45%, helping the rich.”
that statement in itself is utterly worthless in determining whether an act is in any meaningful sense attributable to an ideology.
it is an absolute that suggest that nothing is left wing unless it is part of a perpetual ratchet on taxation towards the nirvana of total taxation.
you could, using this dubious methodology, consider the 50p rate as a temporary abberation to long term trend of 40p. in which case the revision to 45p could be considered a left wing act!
@Ivan White
“You’ve reduced the top rate of tax from 50% to 45%, helping the rich.”
You quote this as evidence for your view that “this is the most right-wing government in living memory.” Perhaps you have a very short memory indeed, but the last Labour Government had a top rate of Income Tax of 40% for 13 years.
The current “most right-wing government” had a top rate of Income Tax of 50% for 3 years, and the rate (at 45%) is still higher than Labour’s 40% rate.
Don’t you think you have got things slightly back-to-front?
@Simon Shaw
Must you act like Cameron’s mouthpiece and repeat that tired old line? During eleven years of uninterrupted economic growth (1997-2008) – the longest for about two hundred years, I believe – there was no need to increase the top rate of income tax, and the standard rate fell from 23% to 20%, the lowest level since the 1930s. It was only when bankers crashed the world economy that Labour raised the top rate to 50%.
This year’s cut in the top rate must be put in the context of falling living standards for most of us and the pernicious bedroom tax for many sick and disabled people. Only a right-wing government would be so callous and insensitive.
@Ivan White
“Must you act like Cameron’s mouthpiece and repeat that tired old line? During eleven years of uninterrupted economic growth (1997-2008) – the longest for about two hundred years, I believe – there was no need to increase the top rate of income tax, and the standard rate fell from 23% to 20%, the lowest level since the 1930s. It was only when bankers crashed the world economy that Labour raised the top rate to 50%.”
Sorry, you are displaying your ignorance.
Perhaps you could explain why, if that is the reason, your precious Labour Government waited 2 years after the crash before increasing the top rate of income tax? In fact the Labour Government had the 50% top rate for less than 30 days whereas the Coalition Government had it for more than 1000 days.