Tories target Vince Cable's seat at next election

 
In firing line: Business Secretary Vince Cable, with his wife Rachel at the Lib-Dem conference last month
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Conservatives are to target Vince Cable as their biggest Cabinet scalp at the next election, the Standard has been told.

They will seek to unseat the Business Secretary as MP for Twickenham in what many Tories would see as sweet revenge for his outspoken attacks on them during the Coalition years.

Many are still riled at Mr Cable criticising “headbanger” Tories “who seem to find sacking people an aphrodisiac” in his keynote speech to the Lib-Dem conference in Brighton.

The Conservatives are doing detailed work on 40 target seats into which they will pile resources in a bid to return David Cameron to Downing Street with an overall majority.

A senior Tory MP said: “Vince’s seat could fall into the outer regions of the top 40 seats.”

Mr Cable held his seat in south-west London with a majority of 12,140 at the 2010 election. But Tories will relish the opportunity to join the campaign to oust him.

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond revealed the scale of Tory anger at Mr Cable yesterday when he took a swipe at him at the Conservative conference in Birmingham when highlighting Lib-Dem plans for a less costly version of Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent.

In barbed comments which surprised senior Conservative MPs, Mr Hammond said: “Threatening to launch Vince Cable at our enemies is not going to be the solution. He may be cheap, but a deterrent has got to be effective as well.”

Seven Conservative MPs had held the Twickenham seat since the Twenties before Mr Cable won it in 1997.

Despite his role in the trebling of tuition fees, his popularity is not believed to have suffered as badly as his party, which has been struggling in the polls.

As revealed by the Standard last week, around 10 of the Tory top 40 target seats will be Lib-Dem held constituencies.

But even if Mr Cable is not in the top 40, he is still set to be the most high-profile Lib-Dem Cabinet minister facing a Conservative onslaught.

Some senior Tories are also pushing for Nick Clegg to be targeted but his seat in Sheffield Hallam is seen as less winnable. One Tory stressed that there would be no “non-aggression” pact to give the Lib-Dem leader an easy ride to cling onto his seat.

“We will run someone hard in Sheffield,” the MP said.

He added that before 1997 Mr Clegg’s Sheffield Hallam seat had been a Conservative constituency since the end of the First World War. Mr Clegg has a majority of over 15,000.

The Conservatives will also seek to win Eastleigh in Hampshire, held by former Cabinet minister Chris Huhne, as well as targeting other

Lib-Dem MPs in south-west London including Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) and Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam).

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