Party would have ‘come out on top’ in EU elections if alliances were made, says leader

Vince Cable has claimed the Liberal Democrats could have beaten the Brexit party in the European elections if remain forces had formed a pact and said the task for his successor would be how to bring pro-referendum parties together.

Cable, whose party gained 14 MEPs and came second behind Nigel Farage’s party, said tactical voters had switched to the Lib Dems in droves, but said more could have been achieved if parties had been prepared to make a pact.

“In the event, no great damage was done, but I think we would have actually come out on top if we had been together,” he said.

The Greens also picked up new MEPs and pushed the Tories into fifth place, but the nascent Change UK party of breakaway ex-Labour and Tory MPs failed to make any significant gains, though took around 3% of the vote.

The Lib Dems celebrated winning three new MEPs in London with an event on Lambeth Bridge with their candidates, including mayoral candidate Siobhan Benita whom the party hopes could beat the Conservatives’ Shaun Bailey into third next year and potentially enter a run-off with Labour’s Sadiq Khan.

Cable, who intends to quit the leadership in a fortnight’s time, said he had received several entreaties to stay on as leader but said he was determined to move on.

“There are people saying that [I should stay], but I think it’s much better to stick with what I decided. I haven’t wrestled with it. I wanted the next generation to take over in an orderly way, we didn’t know it was going to be quite so good but I wanted that to happen,” he said.

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Senior Lib Dem sources have hinted they will make it clear that MPs from Change UK would be welcome in the party – suggesting that MPs like Heidi Allen and Sarah Wollaston may be more likely to retain their seats in parliament with a Lib Dem campaigning force behind them.

The MP for South Cambridgeshire, an area where the Lib Dems saw a surge in support overnight, has previously revealed she offered to quit as a result of the spat over whether to support Liberal Democrat candidates outside London and the south-east, saying that “had it been left to me, I would have absolutely advised tactical voting”.

Cable said the priority now was to work with other remainers in parliament, including Conservatives, to find any means to stop a no-deal Brexit. He said the task for the next leader of the Lib Dems would be finding a productive way of working with other remain parties and MPs.

“Clearly a crucial issue will be how we work with other parties, the normal structures are breaking up,” he said. “How precisely it works out is something we have to debate.”

Ed Davey, the former cabinet minister, and Jo Swinson, the party’s current deputy leader, are expected to launch leadership campaigns in the coming days.

Davey said the party would now use its newfound campaigning vigour to target Conservative leadership contenders advocating a no-deal or hard Brexit. In a message to Tory candidates including Boris Johnson and Esther McVey, he said: “The Liberal Democrats will target your seats to save the country from your catastrophic hard Brexit.”

He added: “More than half the vote in the seats of Michael Gove and Dominic Raab went to remain parties. The remain vote was also higher than the leave vote in the seats of Boris Johnson, Esther McVey, Andrea Leadsom and Jeremy Hunt. The Liberal Democrats have shown they can win in the Tory backyard, and Conservative Brexiteers have every reason to be frightened.”

Cable said the Lib Dems’ resurgence had come mainly at the expense of Jeremy Corbyn and Labour and said it had been clear from at least 10 days prior to the election that Labour voters were switching in droves.

“There is enormous amounts of unhappiness from people who in the past gave him [Corbyn] the benefit of the doubt and assumed he would come right in the end on the European issue but he hasn’t,” Cable said.

“Even today, he is going on about a general election, and there may well be one, but that is not the central issue. He must be in quite a vulnerable position.”