THE Liberal Democrats’ style of campaigning with emphasis on leafleting and information in North Shropshire is here to stay, its leader has said.

Sir Ed Davey was out in Oswestry on Thursday with North Shropshire MP Helen Morgan campaigning ahead of a potential General Election this year.

The Lib Dems received criticism during and since Mrs Morgan’s election in December 2021 for the volume of leaflets delivered through the door in the run-up to the poll.

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But Sir Ed said he was unrepentant in overseeing the leafleting, instead highlighting the lack of national media support for his party.

He said: “The Liberal Democrats believe in going out to talk people and telling people what we stand for, what we’re doing and asking for their views and that does involved lots of leaflets.

“But something I often say is that there are national newspapers out there – I won’t name any – but they tend to support another party.

“They have in one edition the same volume of information in one edition trying to persuade people to vote Conservative than what is in our leaflets.

“All that information would be in a year’s supply of our leaflets.”

Meanwhile, Sir Ed – on his first visit to North Shropshire since Mrs Morgan’s election – insisted that his colleague has already ‘won over the protest vote’ that boycotted the Conservatives in 2019.

He said: “Since the by-election that Helen won, the Conservative vote has gone down even more because their voters are not just protesting by staying home but by going into the ballot box and voting Liberal Democrat.

“We’re seeing swathes of lifelong Conservative voters saying ‘we can’t vote for them anymore’ because they don’t represent or speak up for me as a ‘decent conservative’.

“They’re looking at the values of what the Liberal Democrats and Helen represent and are more comfortable with us.

“There’s the quite big shift and we’re seeing more of it now in by-elections – since Helen’s historic win, we’ve two more historic by-elections in rural areas that while not completely similar to North Shropshire, are in big rural areas.

“They went much better than anyone predicted and that’s on the back of the protest vote turning to the Liberal Democrats.”

Sir Ed also passed on his well wishes to Lib Dem volunteer Julia Hale, whose finger was bitten off by a dog while out leafleting for Mrs Morgan.

But he insisted the party does care for volunteers.

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He said: “My heart goes out to the lady who was bitten by the dog – it must have been an awful experience for her.

“We do look after our volunteers – the Lib Dems don’t have a lot of money, unlike the Conservatives and Labour, and we do rely on volunteers in the community getting out there and delivering leaflets.

“We’re incredibly grateful for that.”