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Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey called on activists to knock on 5mn doors “to bring the blue wall tumbling down” at the UK general election as his party targets older voters following the chancellor’s Budget.
Speaking at the end of his party’s spring conference on Sunday, Davey said: “In so many parts of the country, only we can beat the Conservatives. And we must.”
Bruised by a series of poor electoral results over the past decade, the Lib Dems, Britain’s third-largest party by vote share, are fighting a heavily targeted campaign, focused on dozens of Tory constituencies where they believe they stand a good chance of unseating the incumbent.
Party insiders have said privately that they hope to double their number of MPs from 15 to 30.
Though the Labour party is about 20 points ahead of the Tories in the polls, the ground between them is widely expected to narrow over the next few months. Against this backdrop, the Lib Dems could play an important role in shaping a government in the event of a hung parliament.
The party sees a potential target in older voters who were seen as the big losers from chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Budget this month after he announced cuts to national insurance contributions would not benefit pensioners.
Analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies think-tank in the wake of the Budget shows that the majority of the more than 60 per cent of pensioners who pay income tax will be £650 a year worse off by 2027 as a result of policy changes during the current parliament. Higher-rate pensioner taxpayers will lose more than £3,000 a year.
Lib Dem analysis has found that 94 of the 100 seats with the highest number of people affected by what the party calls the “pensioner stealth tax” are held by Tories, including several held by cabinet ministers.
Lib Dem insiders say the party has been sending out individually addressed campaign material targeted to older voters in many of these seats.
Davey told the Financial Times earlier this week that his party was hoping to oust top cabinet ministers including chancellor Jeremy Hunt, housing secretary Michael Gove and education secretary Gillian Keegan at the election expected this year, in what he termed a “once in a generation” event.
In his conference address on Sunday the Lib Dem leader accused Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of “trying desperately to predict the date of least catastrophe” after this week ruling out going to the polls in May. “The country can’t wait a moment longer to see the back of this terrible government,” Davey said.
During the conference, the Lib Dems also announced a new policy of implementing a levy on share buybacks, mirroring US President Joe Biden who introduced a 1 per cent tax for US-listed companies in 2022 and has said he will increase this to 4 per cent.
The Lib Dems pledged to introduce a similar 4 per cent levy on share buybacks made by FTSE 100 companies, which the party claims would raise about £2bn in its first year. It said the levy would also provide an incentive to companies to invest rather than buy shares as a way to inflate their stock price.
However, Dan Neidle, a tax expert at Tax Policy Associates, warned the policy may not yield the returns claimed by the Lib Dems as UK and US tax incentives for buybacks are very different. He added that in the UK the policy would be likely to result in companies simply switching from buybacks to paying out dividends.
