Cost of living, Brexit, sewage: how the Lib Dems plan to take Berkhamsted

Exract from the Guardian 29.04.23:

Victoria Collins and others — Councillor Sally Symington, Daisy Cooper, MP for St Albans, and Victoria Collins, candidate for South West Hertfordshire, on the campaign trail in Berkhamsted. Photograph: Anna Gordon, The Guardian

"Voters in the Hertfordshire town of Berkhamsted have been sending Victoria Collins, the Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate, videos of sewage. Out knocking on doors before local council elections in May, she claims the state of local waterways is an issue causing former Conservatives to move their vote.

"A lot of people are just horrified, because they're really proud of the local countryside," she says. "We're talking to lifelong Tories who are saying, 'now might be the time to change'."

With its half-timbered houses, smart coffee shops and reams of coronation bunting, Berkhamsted feels like true blue Tory territory. But the Lib Dems hope to make gains on 4 May. The party's leader, Ed Davey, even launched his local election campaign there, on a tractor.

Daisy Cooper, the MP for nearby St Albans, who won her seat from the Conservatives in 2019, says the issue of raw sewage being dumped into rivers "sums up in a very obvious visceral and visual way, the state of the country; that's how bad it's got, that they feel they can do this with impunity".

The local Dacorum district council has 31 Conservative councillors and 19 Lib Dems. With all the seats up for grabs, the Lib Dems believe they could even take control - and then use it as a stepping stone to the general election, echoing their success in nearby Chesham and Amersham in 2021.

"It's all of it," says Laila Walker, who stops Collins and Cooper in the street to offer her support - and express frustration at the state of the country. "The NHS obviously is just desperate. But - cost of living - there's not one thing, there are so many things."

....

Paula Surridge, an elections expert from the thinktank UK in a Changing Europe, says the Lib Dems are right to target "blue wall" areas like this. "They're the right sort of places for them, and they're there as a home for a lot of more liberal Conservative-leaning voters, who didn't vote Lib Dem in 2019 because they didn't want to let [Jeremy] Corbyn in by the back door."

See https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/apr/29/liberal-democrats-plan-take-berkhamsted-local-elections

for the full article.

Editor: If you would like to support and help Victoria get elected at the next GE, email hello@chineselibdems.org.uk

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