THE opening shots in the next General Election campaign were this week fired by West Somerset Conservative MP Ian Liddell-Grainger.
Mr Liddell-Grainger will contest a new Parliamentary constituency taking in West Somerset and some of the Mid Devon area around Wellington, which has been named Tiverton and Minehead.
The new constituency will be created in time for the election, which Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has to call before the end of next year, with January, 2025, the latest time for a ballot.
Mr Liddell-Grainger went on the political attack after Liberal Democrat MP Richard Foord, who represents the existing Tiverton seat, said he would not contest it again.
Mr Foord won the seat at a by-election a year ago in the wake of voters’ distaste for former Conservative MP Neil Parish, who admitted watching pornography on his mobile phone in the House of Commons.
On Monday (July 24), Mr Foord announced he was giving up the constituency and would instead stand in another newly-drawn seat named Honiton and Sidmouth.
Mr Liddell-Grainger, while expressing good wishes to Mr Foord, immediately launched a scathing attack, saying voters were unlikely to miss him.
He said: “I think a lot of people are going to be surprised to be told that he is bowing out - because they were not even aware he had bowed in.
“Mr Foord has hardly made any impression on the constituency, which has been left somewhat adrift since he captured the seat, an unsatisfactory state of affairs now compounded by the fact that the Liberal Democrats are building on their abysmal record in local government by running Mid Devon District Council (MDDC) into the ground.
“There are serious issues to be tackled right across the new constituency, issues of rural deprivation, low wages, high living costs, inadequate public transport, struggling farmers, and appalling broadband speeds - few of which appear to have occupied Mr Foord to any extent.
“These are all matters which require raising with Government time and again until Ministers are forced to listen and act - which is precisely what I intend to do.”
In a separate statement recently, Mr Liddell-Grainger also attacked the performance of Lib-Dem run MDDC, which covers Hemyock, Uffculme, Culmstock, Westleigh, and Holcombe Rogus in the Wellington catchment area.
He said MDDC Lib Dem leader Cllr Luke Taylor was only doing the job of running the council part-time and already, after promising to scrap higher car parking fees, was instead ‘putting them up higher than ever’.
Mr Liddell-Grainger said the new councillors could have renounced their annual increase in allowances but instead the Lib Dem members abstained and allowed them to be put up to more than £5,600 a year each, with an extra £16,800 for Cllr Taylor, who would now earn £22,000 for his part-time role.
He said Mid Devon was missing out on funding through the Government’s Levelling Up agenda because achieving results demanded a ‘very visible, very vocal, completely focussed’ local authority to argue the case.
Mr Liddell-Grainger said money for a new school had been ‘ready and waiting’ since before Christmas but seven months later it ‘still is waiting and waiting and waiting’ because the council’s Lib Dem administration had not made any progress.
He said the district council, ‘frankly, looks rudderless and doomed to me’.