Can the Lib Dems make a comeback in Westminster?

The big question in South West electoral politics is whether the Liberal Democrats can finally make a proper comeback at Westminster

With the announcement of a General Election to be held on 4 July, Martyn Oates considers some of the biggest questions regarding voting in the South West.

For a nearly a decade – and through three general elections – the South West has largely been a sea of blue as far as parliamentary seats go.

After the region’s Liberal Democrat MPs fell like dominos in the 2015 election, the only non-Conservative MP left standing was Labour’s Ben Bradshaw in Exeter.

Labour took Plymouth Sutton and Devonport from the Conservatives in 2017 general election, while a by-election in 2022 saw the Liberal Democrats win the previously safe Conservative seat of Tiverton and Honiton.

But the Conservatives’ dominance of the peninsula remained largely unchallenged.

How successfully will the Conservatives defend all those seats - many of which they currently hold with large majorities?

Labour is targeting just a handful – Plymouth Moor View, Camborne and Redruth and Truro and Falmouth.

The party routed the Conservatives in Plymouth in this month’s local elections and fell fewer than 5,000 votes short of the Tories in the 2019 general election in Truro and Falmouth.

Some polls have suggested Labour could take other rural South West seats they’ve never had any realistic prospect of winning before.

'Volatile political world'

That’s generally taken with a pinch of salt – but who knows in the incredibly volatile political world we’ve been inhabiting over the last decade and a half?

The really big question in South West electoral politics is whether the Liberal Democrats can finally make a proper comeback at Westminster.

Fifteen years ago all of Cornwall’s MPs wore a yellow rosette.

Fewer than ten years ago the Lib Dems still held seats across the patch – constituencies like North Devon, North Cornwall and St Ives which they’d held for decades.

St Ives – where they were just over 4,000 votes behind the Conservatives in 2019 – is probably their brightest hope.

But they will hope recent local election successes in Dorset, Somerset and Devon point to a wider revival of their parliamentary fortunes.