Ed Davey calls for more help for "squeezed middle" in final Blue Wall tour
Leader of the Liberal Democrats Ed Davey will "scale the Blue Wall" with a series of local election visits in London and the South East. The campaigning tour will focus on commuter town battlegrounds where the Liberal Democrats are taking on the Conservatives, including Elmbridge in Surrey which covers Dominic Raab's constituency of Esher and Walton. The Liberal Democrats will launch their final day of election campaigning calling for additional help for families and pensioners in the "squeezed middle." Families with young children are seeing their incomes squeezed by soaring energy bills, mortgage payments, food prices and childcare costs. This comes on top of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's unfair tax rises that will cost the average household £5,500 over the next decade. Speaking ahead of his campaigning tour, Leader of the Liberal Democrats Ed Davey said: "Over the past few weeks of this local elections campaign, I've spoken to hundreds of families and pensioners struggling with a cost of living emergency. "The message from the public has been clear. They are sick of having a Prime Minister who breaks the rules and lies about it, and who puts saving his own skin ahead of saving people from soaring bills. "The local elections are a chance to send a shockwave from communities around the country to the heart of the Conservative Party. "Boris Johnson is not fit to lead the country and he needs to go. At this time of national crisis, we can't afford to have a law-breaking Prime Minister and a tax-hiking Chancellor." Notes The average family is facing a £5,550 tax hike over the next decade as a result of Conservative tax rises, Commons Library research commissioned by the Liberal Democrats has revealed. Full research is available here. Accompanying data tables are available here. |