On a sunny afternoon in the picturesque Hertfordshire town of Berkhamsted, recent graduate Sadie Bond is making an unusual apology to the local Lib Dem candidate, Victoria Collins. Bond says she is going to vote for Collins next month, but feels compelled to disclose her motivation. “It’s tactical, I’m afraid,” she says. “I’ve only ever really known a Tory government and I’m very much fed up with it. Everything feels a bit hopeless. I want Labour to come into power, but I know that isn’t going to happen in this constituency, so I’m voting Lib Dem.”
Far from being offended, the confession is music to the ears of Collins, who has been working to convince voters that she and the Lib Dems are the best vehicle for anyone simply wanting to stop the Tories here. While Harpenden and Berkhamsted is a new seat, it would be a solid brick in the Conservative blue wall in more normal political times. What makes the Lib Dem task here more intriguing is that this seat is sandwiched between two Labour targets – Hemel Hemstead and Welwyn and Hatfield. In the latter, Keir Starmer’s party hopes to fell cabinet minister Grant Shapps.
As a result, this corner of the county has become a testing ground for a tactical voting drive that could help turn a bad result for the Tories into an outright disaster. To pull it off, Lib Dems want voters in Wheathampstead to be clued up enough to back them, while anyone wanting to register an anti-Conservative vote a short amble away in Lemsford will have to know Labour is the best bet.
Alarmingly for Conservative HQ, many polling experts believe the conditions are ripe for a repeat of 1997, when tactical voting benefited Labour and the Lib Dems and cost the Tories dozens of seats, most notably the toppling of Michael Portillo in Enfield Southgate. This time, Shapps is among the big beasts who could suffer their own polling night infamy.
Tactical efforts came to little at the last election. Hopes among pro-Remain campaigners of an anti-Brexit tactical vote were dashed as Boris Johnson won an 80-strong majority. But conditions have changed. Peter Kellner, the veteran pollster, wrote in the Observer before the 1997 election that while he detected little “positive enthusiasm” for Labour, an electorate with “a burning desire to end 18 years of Tory rule” made for receptive tactical voting conditions. He believes similar ingredients are present today.
“In 1997 the leaders of the two parties were Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown,” he said. “Labour voters were quite happy about Ashdown and Lib Dems quite happy about Blair. There was little impediment to most of them switching to whichever anti-Conservative candidate was best placed. Whereas in 2019, nobody knew who Jo Swinson was, and everybody knew who Jeremy Corbyn was and that he wasn’t that popular.”
Collins says the Lib Dems are engaging in a concentrated exercise in Harpenden and Berkhamsted. “We’ve built a big team, which is getting out leaflets, knocking on doors, sharing that message that we’re the ones to beat the Conservatives,” she says. “Local elections that we’ve had in the last 18 months have been pivotal in really building that.”
There is a decent smattering of Lib Dem boards up in gardens, but they disappear on the outskirts of Welwyn. The Lib Dems are pretty open about not bothering in the neighbouring seats where Labour is fighting hard. As Collins points out to some Labour-inclined voters, Labour appears to have quietly retreated on her patch. Indeed, anyone who types a Berkhamsted or Harpenden postcode into Labour’s volunteering website is directed to either Hemel Hempstead or Welwyn and Hatfield. It’s not so much a secret pact between the two parties as an open call for activists on both sides to deploy their common sense.
Andrew Lewin, the polished Labour candidate taking on Shapps, is clear that “absolutely, it is the message” that those thinking of backing another opposition party may damage the effort to remove the Conservatives. “We know every vote in this seat will count,” he says. “There is no sign of activity from the Lib Dems or the Greens. I think the message is getting through that this is a Labour and Conservative marginal seat. We’ll fight for every vote for the next four weeks, we’ll keep hammering that home.”
Anyone who has lived through a general election will be used to Lib Dem tactics. Collins’s leaflets have the obligatory bar chart stating “Labour won’t win here”. But what is intriguing over the border in Welwyn and Hatfield is that Lewin and his team have deployed the tactic, too. Their own bar chart declares the Lib Dems “can’t win here”, adding: “Don’t risk it and wake up to five more years of a Conservative government.”
What could it mean in practice? While the net effects of tactical voting are hard to calculate, the Liberal Democrats could gain 10-20 extra seats through anti-Conservative tactical voting, according to an analysis by the Electoral Calculus consultancy. Meanwhile, with the added help of Nigel Farage and Reform UK, the tactical dynamic could push Labour closer in another swathe of previously safe Tory seats.
It’s not all plain sailing, though. It relies on a lot of shoe leather from campaigners. Internally, Lib Dems are concerned that the tactical voting message isn’t reaching the under-35s to the same degree - a reason why this week they will target them with social media and leaflets about a commitment to expand the youth mobility scheme, making it easier for young Britons to live, study and work in the EU.
And there are still voters devoted to their party of choice. Back in Berkhamsted, Collins meets Kevin Dunford, 67, a semi-retired musician, who understood the tactical argument but still needed “more convincing” to back the Lib Dems. “There is a chance, but it would be holding my nose,” he says. “I’m just sickened to death by the Tories – they’ve really screwed this country big time.”
Meanwhile, Lucy, a young voter in Welwyn, is also cautious. “I’m still deciding, but I’m definitely not voting Tory,” she tells Labour’s Lewin. After a short chat, it emerges she backed the Lib Dems at the recent local elections. She is left with what Labour believes is the killer argument – in the local elections, Labour outpolled the Tories in the wards that make up the seat by just 27 votes.
And of course, the Conservatives are still fighting. David Gauke, the former Conservative cabinet minister whose old seat included Berkhamsted, said that while tactical voting had potential in the new constituency, some polls still suggested Labour could perform strongly – while the Conservatives had appointed an attractive candidate in liberal Tory Nigel Gardner. Meanwhile, there is another surprising pressure Gauke believes could come into play in these knife-edge seats – namely, fears among reluctant Tory voters about the consequences of a Conservative wipeout.
“The Liberal Democrats are seen as being sort of almost a proxy vote for Labour and that’s clearly going to help them and they claim they are making advances in the blue wall,” he said. “But I just wonder whether some quite centrist-minded Conservatives might conclude that voting for a moderate Conservative, who isn’t going to be wanting to hand the party over to Nigel Farage, actually might be a sensible thing to do.”
