The Lib Dems should terrify the Tories

That's the headline on George Eaton's New Statesman piece on the Liberal Democrats' ambitions for May's local elections - and he's not talking about Lord Bonkers' tactic of lurking outside rural polling stations in his gorilla suit.

Eaton has been talking to party "strategists"  - the insiders must have been taking a rare day off. 

He tells us they:

speak of "Project 312" - the number of councillors held by the Tories in seats they lost or narrowly won at the general election

He set's these forthcoming local elections against the results of the last general election:

At the last election, the Blue Wall was battered rather than toppled - but it could be next time. Of the Lib Dems’ 30 notional target seats, all but four are held by the Tories (and would fall with a swing of 8.8 points).

What puzzles Eaton is the Conservatives lack of concern at the Lib Dem threat. Last year the Conservatives lost 12 times as many seats to the Lib Dems (60) as to Reform (five).

He sees Kemi Badenoch's disparaging remarks about Lib Dems being the sort of people who repair the church roof as revealing a lot about her:

It was the kind of comment that makes you question whether Badenoch has any acquaintance with the Conservatives' traditional base. The Blue Wall is a land, as John Major once put it, of "long shadows on county [cricket] grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers" and, one could add, of village fundraisers to fix the church roof. But Badenoch, too often trapped in an online filter bubble, has little feel for the Burkeans who cherish all of this.

But then, it seems to me, few Tories seem to have that feel today. Their politics are piped in from across the Atlantic and they spend more time online than they do in the community.