Hunt jokes ‘Vote Labour’ as Lib Dems chase top Tories

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has issued an unusual rallying cry ahead of the election: Vote Labour.

At a charity event at Lancaster House on Thursday in memory of the late civil servant Chris Martin, Hunt joked that he could endorse tactical voting — but only in his own constituency.

“Vote Labour in Godalming and Ash where I’m dealing with those bastards, the Lib Dems,” he said, referring to the newly created Surrey seat he is defending on July 4.

Hunt’s comments caused hilarity, but the threat posed by the Liberal Democrats to senior Conservative figures at the general election is no laughing matter for those concerned. 

The Lib Dems are hoping to gain a relatively modest 20 or 30 seats at the general election but their targets include southern seats that used to be regarded as rock-solid Tory strongholds.

Big cabinet names in the Lib Dems’ sights include Hunt himself, education secretary Gillian Keegan in Chichester and justice secretary Alex Chalk in Cheltenham.

Hunt has a 9,000 majority in his existing South West Surrey seat, Keegan 22,000 and Alex Chalk less than 1,000. 

Daisy Cooper, Lib Dem deputy leader, said targeting Tory grandees was an effective way to galvanise local voters because “their fingerprints are just all over the failures of this Conservative government”. 

She added that the “big beast strategy is also really good from a fundraising point of view”.

Hunt has injected at least £120,000 of his own money into the local Conservative party in Surrey since the last election, including £50,000 last year.

Sir Ed Davey, Lib Dem leader, headed for Surrey Heath on Wednesday within hours of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak calling the election.

The choice of the seat, held by housing and levelling up secretary Michael Gove, was a signal of Davey’s intent. On Friday Gove, who holds a 19,000 majority, said he would not stand for re-election.

Davey also visited Chalk’s Cheltenham seat on Thursday, and plans to visit two Sussex constituencies. Earlier this year the Lib Dem leader dubbed his party the “Tory Removal Service”.

The Lib Dem offensive is intended to generate the kind of “Portillo moment” seen in the 1997 general election, when Tory cabinet minister Michael Portillo unexpectedly lost his seat in Tony Blair’s New Labour landslide victory. 

The party has been buoyed by recent by-election wins in the “blue wall” and south-west, including Chesham and Amersham in Buckinghamshire and Somerton and Frome in Somerset.

“A previous generation of Conservatives put these people in seats that were rock solid, but the politics and the demographics of those areas have changed dramatically,” said one Lib Dem strategist. “We’re not going to have hubris, but the Conservative vote is soft there, it just is.”

At the same time, Lib Dem MPs and officials still remember their much-publicised and fateful “decapitation strategy” ahead of the 2005 election.

The party that year tried to unseat Conservative grandees such as then Tory leader Michael Howard, Theresa May, David Davis and Oliver Letwin.

All of those attempts were unsuccessful, and led to recriminations.

Some senior Conservatives facing defeat to the Lib Dems have already stepped down, notably former deputy prime minister Dominic Raab, who was expected to lose his Esher and Walton seat.

On Friday Sir John Redwood, a cabinet minister in John Major’s government in the 1990s, also announced he was stepping down from his Wokingham seat, where the Lib Dems are targeting his 7,383 majority.

Redwood, aged 72, said: “I have decided not to put my name forward in the forthcoming election. I have other things I wish to do.”