Lib Dem Cable: we'll win councils

11:40am Friday 12th September 2008

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LIBERAL Democrat shadow chancellor Vince Cable said the party can seize councils from traditional Tory rule when he visited Wycombe last night.

The MP, who led the party while it elected a leader last year, said Labour had presided over growing inequality – and suggested local Conservatives were at odds with the “liberal minded” national party.

Although Buckinghamshire is a Tory stronghold – all MPs, district councils and the county council are blue – Dr Cable said the Lib Dems could take control.

At last night’s annual dinner of the Wycombe Liberal Democrat party he told Bucks Free Press: “If we have good community politics, good councillors, gradually those things change and all the assumptions about permanent Conservative government no longer exist.”

He added: “A time will come, even in an area like this where people are looking for an alternative and we are the alternative.”

To listen to our interview with Dr Cable click the link below (running time six minutes approx).

The party has hit headlines recently after two Labour councillors – one who stood for the party in Wycombe at the 2005 general election – defected to the Lib Dems.

This left Labour with no seats on the county council – now 13 Lib Dems and 44 Tories – and three on Wycombe District Council.

This now has six Lib Dems, 49 Conservatives and two independents.

The constituency had the best record in the UK for recruiting new party members in the last year, its chairman Wendy Guy told the meeting.

Dr Cable, 65, said under Labour “income and inequality is as bad or worse than it was under Mrs Thatcher”.

The credit crunch was having an impact in south Buckinghamshire, he said at the dinner at the Parish Rooms in Church Street.

“Like will become hard and even in a prosperous area like this there an awful lot of pensioners and low paid workers who are finding life very difficult.”

Dr Cable said in his experience Conservatives and Labour councillors “tend to be rather removed” and “know what’s best”.

The party listened more, he said, and was noticeably different from other parties for local and national environmental policies, such as recycling.

Dr Cable, MP for Twickenham, said Wycombe party members had backed his belief of a national “mismatch” between Conservative councillors and David Cameron’s leadership.

He said “the current Conservatives leadership nationally is trying to project itself as liberal minded, environmentally minded”.

He said: “Their local base is not remotely converted to this way of thinking.”