General Election 2015: Lib Dems face disaster in the South-west as Tories target thin majorities

Conservatives launch concerted attack in key region which offers hope to all parties

The Lib Dems are set to put their electoral hope in the “incumbency factor” after a ComRes poll showed a double-digit swing to the Tories across 14 constituencies in the south-west of England (Getty)

The Liberal Democrats face electoral wipe-out in the party’s south-west heartland, where their MPs’ personal popularity represents the “only hope of salvation”, a senior party figure has admitted.

For the first time in a decade, up to a dozen Lib Dem seats in the West Country are in contention, as the Conservatives pile money and resources into a region that is key to their strategy to keep David Cameron in Downing Street.

Sir Nick Harvey, the incumbent Lib Dem MP for North Devon and the party’s defence spokesman, admitted that the party faces a “tough fight across the South-west” and that Lib Dem incumbents would be “falling back on their records in office as their only hope of salvation”.

The Lib Dems are set to put their electoral hope in the “incumbency factor” after a ComRes poll showed a double-digit swing to the Tories across 14 constituencies in the south-west of England.

Speaking at Ilfracombe harbour, Sir Harvey, who first won the former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe’s seat in 1992, dismissed the extent of the swing as “palpably absurd”, but told The Independent on Sunday that the party would “see a reduced vote share” in the South-west as “the price for going into coalition”.

Julia Goldsworthy has returned to Cornwall to put paid to what she calls “unfinished business”

“What we will have to do after the election is think bloody seriously about going into any form of coalition government with anybody,” he said.

Sir Harvey is popular locally and is defending a relatively safe 6,000-vote majority, but elsewhere Lib Dems are defending tiny majorities in the face of a concerted Tory attack that has brought Mr Cameron to the area twice in the last fortnight.

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Further west in Camborne and Redruth, the situation is more complex, as the Conservative MP George Eustice defends a 66-vote majority in the middle of a four-way battle. The Farming minister won the deprived constituency from Lib Dem Julia Goldsworthy in 2010 amid revelations over her expenses, but after a spell working as an adviser for Danny Alexander in the Treasury, Ms Goldsworthy has returned to Cornwall to put paid to what she calls “unfinished business”.

“The South-west has always been more volatile than people remember,” said Mr Eustice, at his family farm in the north of the constituency. “In this seat it’s not unknown for a party to come from third to win, and it’s still unclear if my main challenge will be from Labour or the Lib Dems this time around. When you live with such a slim majority you become fairly fatalistic.”

The latest Ashcroft poll makes grim reading for Ms Goldsworthy, putting her in fourth place behind Ukip, but she remains hopeful. She points to closeness of the vote in 2010 and Liberal Democrat successes in Cornwall council elections last summer including, she says, in the “council ward of Illogan, where Demelza is from in Poldark”.

For his part, Labour’s Michael Foster, a multi-millionaire businessman who has donated more than £250,000 to the Labour Party through his company, says he will “put money” on his victory. Mr Foster is new to politics after a career that saw him share a desk with his “good friend” David Cameron at a media firm in 1990s and act as agent for the radio DJ Chris Evans.

His political inexperience is clear, and in an interview with the IoS he used an A A Milne reference to describe his Tory rival as a “bear of little brain” before accusing Ms Goldsworthy of being part of “a little cabal of gossiping girls, with her red glasses”.

He was equally combative on the doorstep, showing how fierce the campaign is becoming in the West Country. At one point he harangued a retired builder into putting up a Labour poster, after telling him there was “no point” in discussing the pensioners’ concerns over housing standards.

“I’ll vote Labour as I always have and I know my vote counts more here than elsewhere,” said David Trescowthick, after Mr Foster rushed on down the street. “But none of the candidates seems to really want to discuss local problems. It’s all about them stopping the SNP or stopping a Tory government. Not about Cornwall.”

Mr Trescowthick’s fatigue with the election campaign was echoed further west in Penzance, where the Conservative candidate Derek Thomas is trying to overturn a 1,700-vote Lib Dem majority in the once safe seat of West Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.

“People just want this to be over,” he said. “This campaign has gone on for ever. It’s time to vote.”

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