Telegraph
April 30, 2014
Senior Liberal Democrats have privately been warned that the party could be left with no MEPs after next month’s European Parliament elections, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
Senior Liberal Democrats have privately been warned that the party could be left with no MEPs after next month’s European Parliament elections.
Senior party figures were warned that the party’s electoral unpopularity meant that the party was facing seeing its 11 MEPs lose all their seats.
The warning came at a meeting of the party’s hierarchy including Lord Ashdown, the former party leader who is coordinating the party’s election campaign.
Numbered briefing documents were handed out at the meeting, which warned that no MEPs after the election was now a realistic option.
The party looks set to do much worse than in the same polls in 2009, when it was left with 11 MEPs and won 2.1million votes or 14 per cent of the vote.
One insider told The Daily Telegraph “it is looking like an absolute bloodbath”.
Party sources are warning of a “cratering” of support across the country, with the vote in the East Midlands, for example, forecast to fall from 130,000 to 13,000.
The informal forecasts echo polling which consistently puts the LibDems in a distant fourth behind the UK Independence Party, Labour and the Conservatives.