Ed Davey: One Nation Tories see us as their new home

The Liberal Democrats are only targeting two constituencies in Yorkshire which they think they can win, Tory-held Harrogate and Labour-held Sheffield Hallam, less than 4 per cent of the region’s seats.

Harrogate is an easier task, given the public’s distaste for the current Government and the increasingly yuppie makeup of the North Yorkshire seat.

In 2022, one mid-30s owner of a fashion brand in the seat told The Times that though it “used to be grannysville” it’s now “like living in Wimbledon”.

Though these two seats are “really important seats” for the Liberal Democrats, says Sir Ed Davey, who has led the party since 2019, he thinks this election provides his party with an opportunity to capitalise on the Conservatives’ lurch to the right, and that the Lib Dems could become the new home for One Nation Conservatives.

“If you look at what we’ve been doing in local government, which is where we always build our foundation for future success, I think we’ve done a great job,” he said in an exclusive interview with The Yorkshire Post.

He said his party’s successes in Sheffield, Hull, Barnsley, Rotherham, York and the East Riding, show that it has a “quite ambitious” future in Yorkshire, even eye-ing up a by-election tilt in Richmond were Rishi Sunak to take the first jet to the US following an election defeat.

“In the past, the big thing was could we convince Labour voters to vote for us., it’s actually really easy now,” he said.

“Our challenge is convincing voters who are looking to not vote Conservative for the first time ever that we are the ones that share their values.

The coalition years were tough for the Liberal Democrats, managing to lose its left-leaning supporters who did not want the Tories in power, as well as its right flank the Conservatives were able to turn to their cause in the following years.

However, Sir Ed said that these voters could help the party redraw the electoral map later this year.

“A lot of former Conservative MPs, councillors, feel that the Liberal Democrats share their views on the economy and how you should treat other people, how we care about the environment, and the understanding that our political system is broken here.

“In all my time in politics, and I was first elected in 1997, and I’ve spoken to a lot of Conservative voters over the years, there is no doubt that the One Nation Conservatives, the more liberal, outward-looking, business-minded people, they’re coming to us.

“The Conservatives are increasingly looking like the Reform Party,” he says, citing concerns over incidents such as Liz Truss sharing a platform with right-wing figures such as Steve Bannon.

“People are looking at those sorts of Tory politicians and say the Conservatives don’t speak for me anymore and they no longer share my values.

“I think that could make this a once-in-a-generation that could change the political geography of Great Britain even more than I dare imagine.”