Hughes: Donor appeal

The Liberal Democrats must widen their pool of potential financial donors, Simon Hughes has said.

Addressing the final day of the Bournemouth conference, the new party president indicated his concern that the party still lacks the financial firepower to take on Labour and the Conservatives.

With the next general election campaign rapidly approaching, the Lib Dems are once again facing the prospect of being massively outspent by their main rivals.

Hughes set ambitious new targets for party membership in a bid to narrow the financial gap.

"Our job is to turn sympathisers into supporters, supporters into voters, voters into members and members into activists," he said.

"I aim for our party to triple its membership, and, as we go up, we could overtake the membership of New Labour coming down."

But he said that to meet the target the party would have to "further improve our membership services".

"We must find new donors - not least so that we make fewer regular demands on our less affluent members to pay."

Raising the game

Hughes also said the Lib Dems must raise their game in order to challenge Labour and the Conservatives.

He said he would be focussing on helping to "put our case to the unconverted" rather than attending party lunches and dinners.

As the party's grassroots members prepared to return to their constituencies, Hughes said they should "use every available moment to campaign ever more effectively".

"At the next election we intend to make progress by winning seats in England, Scotland and Wales," he added.

"When we arrive in government we intend to be a government fully representing all the countries and regions of Britain - as the Conservatives have long ceased to do and show no signs of doing again."

Hughes said there was no longer such a thing as "natural Tory territory" and equally no more "safe seats for Labour".

"But absolutely no no-go areas for the Liberal Democrats."

Work to do

The Lib Dem president conceded there was "much work for us still to do".

"Since our great leap forward as the alliance of the '80s we have become a much deeper, broader, wider and more strongly rooted party," he said.

"But...now more than ever is the time to up our game."

As part of the election strategy, Hughes said he would also be setting up a new unit to target seats held by Labour.

The Lib Dems have already set up a similar unit to target key Conservative-held seats.

"The British people in their wisdom will decide exactly how many votes we will receive and how many seats we will win," Hughes concluded.

"But we are determined to go onwards and upwards. We are not giving up and we are not turning back."