Lib Dem leadership race: Davey boosted by support from former leaders and five of party's 11 MPs

Exclusive: More than 200 party figures sign letter endorsing acting leader in contest against Layla Moran

Ed Davey has made it clear he would position the party to the left of centre (PA)

As ballot papers go out today for the Liberal Democrat leadership contest, Sir Ed Davey’s campaign has been boosted by a joint letter from more than 200 party figures – including former leaders Tim Farron and Sir Menzies Campbell and five of the party’s 11 MPs – endorsing his candidacy.

With the delayed election finally getting under way in earnest, a think tank report found that the Lib Dems’ best route back to electoral success lies in “cosying up” to Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour, as the party’s most winnable seats lie in a “yellow halo” in the London suburbs and home counties of the southeast where they are the main rivals to Tories.

Davey has made it clear he would position the party to the left of centre and has firmly ruled out a repeat of the 2010 Tory-Lib Dem coalition, while rival Layla Moran has said she would “never say never” to a pact with Sir Keir.

Today’s letter – seen by The Independent – states that Davey has the “experience, vision and judgement” to rebuild the party following three bruising elections which have seen its numbers at Westminster savagely reduced and former leader Jo Swinson even losing her own seat in December.

Signed by MPs Mr Farron, Daisy Cooper, Munira Wilson, Sarah Olney and Christine Jardine along with many councillors and activists as well as ex-deputy leader Malcolm Bruce, former MPs including Paul Burstow and Sarah Wollaston and the author of the post-mortem into the 2019 election debacle, Dorothy Thornhill, the letter states: “Ed has presented a clear, coherent vision for the future of the party that stands for a fairer, greener, more caring country. A country where we give universal free childcare to parents, where we invest £150bn in green jobs and renewable homes and where we give the 10 million carers in the UK a new, better deal.

“That platform, with Ed Davey as leader, is one that will help us rebuild the party, win elections and put more Liberal Democrats in town halls, council chambers and parliaments across the country.”

But Ms Moran insisted that the momentum was with her campaign following a strong social media response to recent appearances and the endorsement of three current MPs – Wera Hobhouse, Jamie Stone and Wendy Chamberlain – and four recent MPs as well as support from Dragon’s Den entrepreneur Deborah Meaden, who said she would make a “cracking” leader.

The Oxford West and Abingdon MP pointedly said that electing her would allow the Lib Dems to “move on” from the coalition and improve on the depths of as low as 6 per cent in the polls plumbed under Davey’s acting leadership.

“I’m overwhelmed and delighted with the broad-base support I’ve received so far,” she said. “The momentum is with my positive campaign to move both our country and our party forward.

Liberal Democrat leadership contender Layla Moran (PA)

“Under my leadership, a renewed and revived Liberal Democrat party will do better than 6 per cent in the polls. Only by moving on from the coalition and rebuilding trust will we win again and deliver the progressive change our country so desperately needs.

“That’s why I am urging members to seize this moment to move forward together and vote for me to be the next leader of the Liberal Democrats.”

The Lib Dems’ 117,000 members have until 26 August to cast their postal or electronic ballot in the two-horse race to replace Ms Swinson, with the winner announced the following day. But many are expected to respond immediately as voting slips appear on doormats and in email inboxes, making the next few days crucial to the campaign.

KIngston and Surbiton MP Davey said he was “proud that so many people – from grassroots activists to a majority of my colleagues in parliament – are putting their faith in me as the candidate with the experience, vision and judgement necessary to rebuild the party and take on Boris Johnson”.

He added: ”Our country faces huge challenges, as does our party. The election review showed there are no quick fixes to these challenges and I am determined to rebuild our party on solid foundations so we can elect more Liberal Democrats into town halls, council chambers and parliaments across the country.”

The scale of the challenge facing the victor in this summer’s poll was laid bare in the UK in a Changing Europe report, which noted that “there is no such thing as a Lib Dem safe seat – even for the party’s leader”.

Former leader Jo Swinson was the most prominent Lib Dem casualty of the 2019 election (Reuters)

Its authors, led by Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London, said there was a “distinct possibility” of the new leader taking the party into “long-term paralysis” as happened to its forerunner Liberal Party between 1945 and the formation of the SDP in 1983, when Commons representation rarely scraped into double figures.

And the new leader will inherit a new core vote of educated graduates in the southeast and university cities, which has virtually displaced the former liberal heartlands of the southwest and the Celtic fringe.

Despite losing seats in 2019, the report found Lib Dems are now “within realistic touching distance” of securing 50 seats where they either won or came a close second in December. They either hold or are highly competitive in 30 per cent of the 64 seats with most graduates as voters.

And the overwhelming bulk of their main target seats – 23 out of the 29 most winnable – are Tory-held, with just nine where Labour and Lib Dems took first and second places in 2019.

“The areas of growth – where Jo Swinson did better than Nick Clegg – provide a ‘yellow halo’ of new electoral strength for the party in parts of London, Surrey, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Hampshire and Cambridgeshire,” wrote Prof Bale.

“In theory, this provides the conditions for a symbiotic relationship with Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. In practice, of course, things might not be quite so easy – not when many Lib Dem activists are also councillors – or would-be councillors – on local authorities where there is no love lost between them and their Labour counterparts. For some of them, the building of some kind of progressive alliance nationally will be far lower down their list of priorities than taking on and beating Labour locally.”

The report warned: “Both candidates for the Lib Dem leadership will have to live with the real possibility that political and personal defeat could end up being the price of taking the job. But it is a job that brings with it a genuine opportunity to grow the party once again – if, that is, they make the right strategic calls.”