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The Liberal Democrats are attempting to force a UK general election in May as the party gears up to focus its limited resources on a few dozen target seats predominantly across the south of England.
Speaking at a rally in Guildford, Surrey, leader Sir Ed Davey announced the Lib Dems would put forward a bill when parliament returns next week to reinstate legislation that requires a general election to be held on the first Thursday in May in the fifth year after the last polling day.
As he kick-started months of tightly focused election campaigning on Wednesday, Davey conceded his bid to reinstate the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, which was repealed less than two year ago, was a long shot given it was unlikely to receive the backing of the ruling Conservatives.
Davey said that holding an election in May, rather than waiting for the Tories to decide the time that suits their electoral chances the best, would be better for the country. “Britain can’t wait for the change we need. People are fed up of waiting,” he told supporters.
He said he had not spoken to the main opposition Labour party about backing the proposed bill. As it stands the law requires an election to be called at least once every five years, which means it must be held by January 2025.
Last week, the government set the date for the Budget as March 6, leaving open the possibility that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak could call a general election shortly afterwards, with a polling day coinciding with local elections on May 2.
However, the expectation in Westminster is that with the Conservatives trailing Labour by an average of 18 points in the polls, Sunak will wait to call one in the autumn to give more time for the economy to improve.
The Lib Dems, which hope to overtake the Scottish National party to regain their position as the third-largest party in the House of Commons, have long been confident about ousting the Tories from some of their traditional strongholds in south-east England.
But in recent months Davey has become more ambitious as the polls showed support for the Lib Dems was growing in rural seats in western England, where the party has been successful at presenting itself as the cornerstone of an anti-Tory coalition.
Though the Lib Dem leader would not be drawn on the exact number of seats he is targeting, he noted that there was “real movement against the Conservatives like we haven’t seen for quite some time” in large parts of the south east, south west and London, as well as the suburbs of Manchester, Sheffield and Harrogate.
The Lib Dems had more than a dozen MPs in south-west England at the 2005 election — their most successful in modern history when they won 62 seats in total.
They were, however, almost annihilated at Westminster in 2015 after five years in coalition with the Tories, and at the 2019 election they won just 11 seats after their reputation was damaged in rural Brexit-voting areas by the party’s staunch pro-EU stance.
The election strategy, designed by a few senior party officials including director of field campaigns Dave McCobb, centres around the seats where the party came second in the last general election and where it has done particularly well in local elections.
Buoyed by four recent by-election wins, the Lib Dems will seek to fight highly localised campaigns, even if this leads to some contradictory policy proposals in areas such as housebuilding. At the national level the party will focus on two policies: tackling sewage and reducing NHS waiting lists.
Patrick English, a political analyst at the pollster YouGov, said his analysis suggested the party could win between 30 and 40 seats at the next election.