THE Liberal Democrats have the ability to recover most if not all of the ground they lost in the 2015 General Election, Alistair Carmichael, the former Scottish Secretary, has suggested.
The party’s sole Scottish MP said that while he was not counting any chickens, he believed there were “opportunities” for the Lib Dems, who will focus their campaigning on opposing Brexit, a policy the pro-EU party has created a distinctive position on in calling for a second poll on the final withdrawal deal.
In Scotland, Mr Carmichael said there was a great opportunity to recover some of the 10 seats the party lost given what he called was the “massive unpopularity” of the Nationalists’ drive for another independence referendum and the majority support for Remain.
Two years ago, the Lib Dems experienced an electoral disaster, losing 49 seats across Britain and retaining just eight. They will now be heavily targeting resources on previously successful areas such as London, where former Cabinet ministers Sir Ed Davey and Sir Vince Cable will fight seats.
In Scotland the targets are obvious, Fife North East, Caithness, Argyll and Bute, East Dunbartonshire and Edinburgh West; all seats they previously held.
While the south west of England has previously been a Lib Dem stronghold, recovery there might not be so straightforward given places like Devon, Cornwall and Somerset all backed Brexit and will be unlikely to support Tim Farron’s pro-EU message.
Although the party is still only polling around 10 per cent, its tail is up because of its new-found cause: staunchly opposing Brexit.
In December, Sarah Olney upped to nine the Lib Dems’ Commons contingent by winning the Richmond Park by-election and there have since been council by-election wins.
Also, the Lib Dem leadership believes the student vote, which largely abandoned the party after 2010 because of the u-turn on scrapping university tuition fees, is now returning because of its heavily pro-EU stance.
Mr Farron, who will arguably be the opposition leader happiest at the prospect of a snap election, has made clear his party’s ambition is to prevent the Tories having an outright majority, which would give his party leverage over the terms of Brexit ie soft not hard.
"If you want a Britain that is open, tolerant and united, this is your chance. Only the Liberal Democrats can prevent a Conservative majority."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel