With local council elections on 5 May fast approaching, Labour’s campaign chiefs are straining every sinew to thwart their bitter historic rivals… the Lib Dems.
Labour is dragging what was formerly Britain’s third party through the mud in a targeted social media ad campaign, described by Labour’s own Momentum, as “morally disgraceful [and] politically inept”. The campaign has accused Ed Davey’s party of being “soft on drugs and soft on crime”.
The ads, which claim that the Lib Dems want to “legalise drugs and soften punishments” and “get rid of Britain’s nuclear weapons”, were paid for by Labour earlier in April, as part of its attempt to coax voters across the divide.
But as the FT’s Stephen Bush points out, are voters in Hallam and Haringey – among the last remaining Labour-Lib Dem battlegrounds – really yearning for a nuclear UK?
A spokesperson from the Lib Dems said: “Instead of pushing false claims about the Liberal Democrats, Labour would do better to focus on the Conservative government’s appalling record on crime, which is seeing 5,000 crimes go unsolved every day.”
These ads come after the Labour Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan’s, January proposal to decriminalise minor cannabis related offences was shot down by Keir Starmer, who said “I’m not in favour of us changing the law or decriminalisation.”
Faced with a historic opportunity to give Johnson’s Tories a bloody nose, you’d have thought Labour might have bigger fish to fry…
