In this general election, the Conservatives are supposed to be fighting a campaign on three fronts. One is against Labour, a second is against Reform and the third is against the Liberal Democrats. The Conservatives’ problem is partly that they are not fighting very well and partly that they are only fighting on two of the fronts, leaving the third unguarded.
If wartime analogies are your thing, you could say that the Conservatives have a Singapore problem. Before the second world war, the British empire armed Singapore to fight naval battles against Japan. Famously, most of Singapore’s heavy artillery faced out to sea. But in 1942, the Japanese army overran Singapore from the rear, coming in from the Malayan mainland.
Today, the Tory high command and many supporters, especially in the media, look fixedly out to sea at the advance of Reform. As a result, they have all underestimated the threat from the Lib Dems at their rear. Even now, the Conservatives have not understood that Ed Davey is a far bigger danger to their majority than Nigel Farage.
True, David Cameron was dispatched to Devon to strengthen Tory defences there this week, even though polling finds Cameron is no longer the gamechanging asset some assume. The overall approach, however, has been wilfully blinkered. It is not as though the Conservatives have had no warning. In the 2019-24 parliament, they lost four byelections to the Lib Dems, all spectacularly, all in very safe seats. The damage inflicted by Reform is small by comparison.
The Lib-Dem byelection wins came in some strikingly different parts of England – Chesham and Amersham in the London commuter belt, Tiverton and Honiton, along with Somerton and Frome, in the A30 corridor stretching to Land’s End, and North Shropshire in the rural West Midlands. All these seats are now on the 60 or so target-seat list on which Davey’s consistently smart 2024 campaign is concentrated.
The biggest mistake that anyone could make is to dismiss these seats as a bunch of random places. They are not. Terms such as “middle England” or “middle Britain” are inexact, but they capture something emotionally meaningful about what these target electorates represent. They are not partisan places, but they have a belief in community, a conviction that the country could do better, including in their area, and they mostly have generous values. They have little in common with Reform. They are the middle-ground voters that government parties ignore at their peril.
Talking to voters this month in the perfectly named village of Myddle, that impression was hard to miss. Myddle sits in the heart of the North Shropshire seat that the Conservatives had held for more than a century before Helen Morgan won it for the Lib Dems in late 2021. That was a pivotal moment in the Tory eclipse, a leading indicator that Boris Johnson’s electoral allure was over. But holding on to North Shropshire on 4 July would be something else.
I suspect Morgan will do it, even though hers is the toughest of the four byelection gains to retain. Morgan is an exemplary local campaigner, and in Myddle an impressive number of people recognised her when she stopped by. By far their most common concern was the local NHS. Many had stories of long delays to recount. None of the 40 or so people I spoke to said they would vote Conservative. “It would be outrageous if she doesn’t retain the seat,” Michael, a Myddle resident, told me.
It isn’t hard to tell a Lib Dem target seat when you find yourself in one. But the exact number of targets is a jealously guarded secret. One official says she hasn’t even shared it with her husband. Most, though, can be identified by looking at the 75 seats in which the party finished second in 2019 and had a vote share of 20% or more. But not all. The targets will also tend to be more rural, more middle class and more remain-voting. But, again, these are not foolproof indicators.
Another key sign is that Labour is not fighting hard. Almost every Lib Dem target is on Labour’s list of 211 “non battleground” seats. The only three exceptions, it is said, are Cambridge, Wimbledon and Nick Clegg’s former seat of Sheffield Hallam. For the rest, Labour and the Lib Dems are fighting in distinct spheres, leaving the field open for extensive tactical voting on 4 July without any formal agreement.
As polling day nears, stand by for sheaves of advice about tactical voting. There has not been anything like this since 1997. Both parties, and maybe the Greens too, will benefit in some way. Five years ago, the Lib Dems took almost 12% of the national vote and won 11 seats. This year, with poll averages showing them with a lower national share, the Lib Dems are in line to win 38 seats, according to Ipsos this week, or 56 seats, according to Survation.
An outcome like this would not merely highlight the workings of the first-past-the-post electoral system; it would also say something profound about the kind of country that this still is – just about. It would say the claim that the real England or the real Britain finds its voice in the Conservative party as it currently exists, let alone in Reform, is dangerously untrue. As the most disruptive 10 years in political memory come to an end, it would say that Labour and the Lib Dems, between them, are the truer voice of middle Britain today.
Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist
