The Liberal Democrats could be ahead of Labour in the race to win the European elections by next week, a senior party figure has said.
Former cabinet minister Sir Ed Davey even suggested the Lib Dems could beat Nigel Farage’s much fancied Brexit Party and top the polls on Thursday May 23.
Speaking to HuffPost UK’s Commons People podcast, Sir Ed, MP for Kingston and Surbiton, said he “wouldn’t be surprised” to see the Lib Dems surging ahead of Labour in opinion polls for the elections “in the next few days”.
He claimed the party was drawing support from Labour and Tory Remainers, while Green Party and Change UK supporters were flooding to the Lib Dems because they are more “credible” on Europe and have the “trump card” of being able to appeal to centre-left and centre-right voters.
Most European election polls show the the Brexit Party and Labour with comfortable double digit leads over the Lib Dems.
But party insiders have been cheered by BMG research for the Independent, which counted only people who would definitely vote and showed the Lib Dems on 19%, just three points behind Labour on 22%, with Farage’s outfit in front on 26%.
The Lib Dems are also gaining ground on Labour as polling day gets closer and Sir Ed predicted: “We are now ahead of the Conservatives, we are closing the gap on the Labour Party, we’re almost overtaking them, I wouldn’t be surprised if you see polls in the next few days where the Liberal Democrats have overtaken the Labour Party.
“We have seen a lot of Labour voters coming towards us, a lot of lifetime Tory supporters are backing us, Greens and Change UK are coming for us.
“It looks like we could possibly finish second - who knows if we could actually beat Nigel Farage?
“If you want to stop Brexit, that is your dream isn’t it?”
Davey, seen as a frontrunner in the race to succeed Sir Vince Cable as leader, declined to answer questions on whether he would stand in the contest but did not rule it out.
“At the moment Vince hasn’t stood down, we are expecting him to stand down and then people will make their positions clear,” he said.
And he revealed he was once “tempted” to become a spy after getting a tap on the shoulder from MI6 while studying at Oxford in the 1980s.
Joking that he was probably breaking the official secrets act, Davey revealed he was sent a letter which invited him to apply for a civil servant position which was not open to competition, and went to an “amazing interview” where he was “grilled” for two hours.
He was then asked if he still wanted to apply “because they were happy with me as a potential spy”.
“I declined,” Davey recalled.
“Let me tell you why I declined - because it was tempting I have to say - was because I was then really clear that I was a Liberal Democrat and wanted to have some role in politics and the problem is if you are on Her Majesty’s Secret Service you can’t tell anybody anything about it.
“I asked them a lot of questions about what I could do but you have to have a secret life - for obvious reasons, it’s really pretty obvious when you think about it.
“Whilst I am sure there have been former spies in British politics, as a young man who wanted to campaign on things like the environment that is a passion of mine and education, I just thought it would get in the way of that path.”