Cameron pitches for Liberal Democrat voters while diverting resources to once safe Labour seats

David Cameron will reassert his claim to be a liberal Conservative today in a bid to attract voters away from Nick Clegg:

In a speech today Mr Cameron will use Nick Clegg's own language of "hard-wiring" fairness into policy. He will say:

“I want to speak directly to the people who have idealism and progressive ideals hardwired into their DNA... everyone who is desperate for real change: Whether you’ve been a Lib Dem voter or a Labour voter or a Green voter – if you care about the environment, if you want action to improve your quality of life, if you care about civil liberties, if you care about people power, if you want a clean break from the past – vote Conservative.”

At a press conference in London Mr Cameron will highlight Tory pledges to stop the third runway at Heathrow, scrap ID cards and protect the poorest people from public spending cuts.

In addition 500,000 emergency leaflets will be distributed in LibCon marginals and tomorrow's party election broadcast will highlight the dangers of a hung parliament.

Meanwhile Conservative HQ believes that the collapse of Labour's opinion poll rating - now at 27.8% in ConservativeHome's Poll of Polls - has made twenty more Labour seats vulnerable, including the seats of two Cabinet ministers, Ed Balls and John Denham. On Friday The Telegraph's Benedict Brogan blogged that Jack Straw's seat of Blackburn was now a Tory target. [Mr Straw is not only struggling to hold his seat, he was struggling to attract a crowd on the campaign trail yesterday.]

CentreRight contributor Melanchthon will be delighted at the focus on Labour. Over the last week he has been urging David Cameron to "focus all guns on Labour":

"What we need for outright victory here, with the Lib Dems in the low 30s, is probably a margin over Labour of something slightly below 10% (assuming the non-uniform seat distributions of the vote swing favours us - e.g. by electors voting tactically to get the Labour candidate out), versus the about 6-7% margin we needed when the Lib Dems were about 20%. .. Spending all our time talking about the Lib Dems or the dangers of a hung Parliament or trying to smear Clegg personally, and missing the opportunity to attack Labour, is simply a gross error.  If we keep our guns focused on Labour, we can kill off the Labour vote and harvest a feast of seats from its carcass."

Tim Montgomerie