Sir Ed Davey once rubbed shoulders with Jeremy Hunt around the Cabinet table. Now, the Liberal Democrat leader is determined to end the Chancellor's Commons career.
Mr Hunt's Surrey constituency is top of the Liberal Democrats’ target list as they seek to scoop up “a lot of seats” in London’s commuter belt at the next General Election.
Sir Ed also wants to deliver the same fate to Michael Gove, another former Cabinet colleague - with the 2010-15 Coalition years long forgotten.
The Liberal Democrat leader makes this crystal clear when asked if he is getting advice from Nick Clegg, who led the party into power-sharing with the Tories, and now inhabits a very different world as social media giant Meta’s president of global affairs.
“I’m speaking to my own advisors,” Sir Ed tells the Standard.
“Nick did a fantastic job for the party and had some really good ideas. But time has moved on.”
The Lib Dems have a long list of targets in London and the wider South East.
Wimbledon, Carshalton and Wallington, Esher and Walton, Guildford, Surrey Heath (Gove), Ash and Godalming (Hunt), South West Surrey, Winchester, South Cambridgeshire, Lewes, Eastbourne, Hitchin, Harpenden and Berkhamsted, Wokingham, St Neots and Mid Cambs.
“In London and the home counties we’re performing incredibly well. In that sort of commuter belt of the Blue Wall I think we can take a lot of seats off Conservatives,” says Kingston and Surbiton MP Sir Ed.
“Lots of people there have similar concerns... the triple whammy of high mortgages, high rail fares as commuters and stealth taxes.”
Sir Ed insists he is not being over-ambitious and making the mistakes levied at his predecessor, Joe Swinson, by targeting too many seats and spreading his campaign too thin.
In the run up to the last general election, with "bollocks to Brexit" as a campaign slogan, the party was briefing it would be "disappointed" to come away with fewer than 40 new MPs.
Then Streatham MP Chuka Umunna, who defected to the Lib Dems from Labour via the short-lived Change UK, even told the party's 2019 conference that up to 200 constituencies could be in play.
In reality the Lib Dems emerged from the vote with one fewer MP (11) than they had achieved in 2017 and party leader Ms Swinson losing her seat.
But Sir Ed has been boosted by four by-election wins since he took over and his party is favourite to swoop to victory in the upcoming vote in Mid Bedfordshire.
The Lib Dem leader has already been to Nadine Dorries' former seat five times to campaign before he takes on his the party's first autumn conference since 2019, and his first as leader, this weekend.
“I’m confident that we’ve got the right targets,” says Sir Ed.
"The good news for us is our by-election victories in Conservative, or former Conservative strongholds, the numbers are going up," he said.
"In 'true blue' Buckinghamshire, no one expected us to win Chesham and Amersham.
"But we did. And then went off to North Shropshire, a seat the Tories have held for 200 years, we won that and then Tiverton and Honiton we overturned the largest majority in a by-election in British political history...What we're finding is in many parts of the country, we are performing better than we'd expected to, and I would say particularly the blue seats.
"In London and indeed the home counties, Surrey, Hertfordshire, Sussex, Kent, Cambridgeshire and so on, we're performing incredibly well. And in that sort of commuter belt of the blue wall I think we can take off Conservatives."
Sir Ed says he's confident of holding onto the seats won in the by-elections and thinks they will take "many more off the Conservatives" at the next general election.
However, this has meant policy changes to align the party more with traditional Tory voters.
Sir Ed flatly ruled out a wealth tax, with the Lib Dems having previously proposed them for properties worth more than £1 million, or £2 million.
A target to build 380,000 homes a year in England could also be scrapped if party members agree conference.
"It's a top down target, which doesn't take community with you," he says. "What we want to do is replace it, assuming conference agrees with two approaches.
"One which is already our policy and one which is new. We want a target for social housing, quite a much lower target, and it's a more relevant target. It's one that the state can can, by definition, deliver because it's social housing, council housing and housing association housing. So we think that's a much more credible target and it meets the massive problem that people are having of not being able to afford home."
He also rules out any "election pact" with Labour.
But also acknowledges Sheffield Hallam is the only Labour seat the Lib Dems are actively targeting.
"If I'm honest with you, the seats that we were either hold on we are in a good second place tend to be against Conservatives, and that's just an electoral fact," Mr Davey said.
"I'm confident that we've got the right targets and we're going to hit them."
