Lib Dems target Trump to boost hopes in council elections fight

The Liberal Democrats are stepping up their anti-Donald Trump messaging this weekend in the hope of using dislike of the US president among Tory and Labour voters to make big gains in England's council and mayoral elections on 1 May.

- Toby Helm Political Editor

Ed Davey's party believes it could overtake the Tories in terms of the number of councils under its control, partly by highlighting the reluctance of Keir Starmer and Kemmi Badenoch to criticise Trump on issues such as tariffs, his dealings with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, over the war in Ukraine and his attitude to the Israel-Gaza crisis.

With global stock markets tumbling after Trump's imposition of punitive tariffs on the rest of the world last Wednesday, the local elections are set to take place in a period of economic uncertainty unmatched since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic.

While local government issues will inevitably still dominate on 1 May, Trump's actions are now rebounding directly on ordinary voters not just in the US but internationally, as the economic clouds gather and the value of their pensions and other savings become far less certain.

Yesterday - as her party continues to look for novel ways to engineer a "Trump bump" - a Liberal Democrat MP called for a special visa route to allow Americans fleeing the Trump presidency to come to the UK.