LIBDEM activists who deliver more leaflets and knock on more doors will be given a cash boost to their General Election budgets by the party’s HQ.
As campaigning ramps up ahead of the Westminster election, the date of which has still not been set, PoliticsHome reports that regional activists in target seats will be ranked on a variety of key performance indicators.
It’s understood that campaigners working in target seats will be graded in internal party league tables on efforts to recruit new members, raise more funds, the number of leaflets distributed, and doors knocked.
The regional activists who rise up the league table will be rewarded with more campaigning cash by HQ.
The party is hoping to make significant gains in Tory heartlands at the next election, and improve on their current 15 MPs, four of which have Scottish constituencies. They won 11 at the last General Election in 2019 but have bolstered numbers through several by-election wins.
The LibDems are understood to be targeting around 30 or so key seats that will be given the bulk of the party’s resources, the majority of which will target the Tories “Blue Wall” in the South of England. They are seats where a large number of voters backed remain in 2016.
It comes as party leader Ed Davey demanded Prime Minister Rishi Sunak call a May General Election.
Reports suggest that activists will need to hit the business like four key performance indicators, leaflets, doors, fundraising, and recruitment, to unlock the extra cash.
“If you want to win you’ve got to prove yourself, and then you get more HQ resource,” a Lib Dem source told Politics Home.
As the Tories have much more funding behind them, only recently spending a whopping £30,000 on Facebook adverts for Rishi Sunak in the space of a week, the LibDems are understood to be focusing their efforts on groundwork and pushing activists to hit as many doors as possible.
Campaigning in Surrey on Wednesday, the LibDems demanded a General Election on May 2.
The PM has the power to hold the vote as late as January 2025.
Party leader Ed Davey said: "Four historic by-election wins and sweeping gains in last May's local elections show that voters across the country are turning to us for change.
"We shouldn't have to wait any longer.
“It shouldn’t be up to Rishi Sunak to cling on for another 12 months, desperate for something to turn up.
“He knows the time is up, that’s why he hasn’t called the general election so far.”
In a campaign stunt, Davey unveiled a “Tory removal service” poster to highlight the Lib Dems’ four by-election gains from the Conservatives since 2019’s Westminster election.
Davey was visiting Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt’s constituencies, with the LibDems hoping they could snatch the Cabinet ministers’ seats.
Gove held the Surrey Heath seat with a majority of 18,349 over his LibDem opponent in 2019, but the LibDems have eyes on the area after taking control of the local council in May 2023.
They have also become the largest party on Waverly Borough Council, in the Chancellor’s local area.
The LibDems have won seats in Chesham and Amersham, Buckinghamshire, Tiverton and Honiton, Devon, and Somerton and Frome, Somerset, in by-elections in the south of England since 2019.
