As Lib Dems surge, rivals want merger

THE Liberal Democrats were jubilant last night after their election surge forced Change UK to beg them for a merger.

Sir Vince Cable’s party was set to finish second in terms of vote share as it hoovered up thousands of pro-Remain votes from the main parties.

Change UK MP Chuka Umunna said on Saturday that the two parties should form a pact not to stand against each other’s candidates in the next general election.

And yesterday the leader of the new centrist party Heidi Allen, who left the Conservatives to join other breakaway Tory and Labour MPs, said she would go ‘one step further’ than Mr Umunna.

‘I would like us to be in the same vehicle,’ she told BBC Radio 5 Live. Asked if she meant the same party, Mrs Allen replied: ‘Yeah, probably.’

Projections indicated Change UK was last night on course not to bag a single MEP, with the Lib Dems taking the lion’s share of the Remain votes. The Greens also outperformed them.

The Lib Dems were ‘cock-a-hoop’ at their expected performance, taking votes from Labour supporters angry at the party’s equivocal stance on Brexit.

Turnout was said to be higher in Remain areas than in Leave ones, meaning the Lib Dems were on course to do even better than predicted.

At the last European elections in 2014, towards the end of the Coalition period, the Lib Dems performed disastrously – taking only one seat.

In the weeks following its formation, Change UK figures were talking confidently of replacing the Lib Dems as the third party in British politics.

But yesterday Mrs Allen admitted that it was more likely that Change UK would have to join forces with the Lib Dems.

She said: ‘I don’t know what the format will be, but will we be singing from the same hymn sheet? I would hope as a collective, let’s call us a collective, somewhere in the middle with other likeminded colleagues.’

Mrs Allen said that to be a ‘real insurgent force’, the alliance needs to be ‘brand new’ rather than a larger Lib Dem Party.