VINCE Cable said he would be disappointed if the Lib Dems don’t win several hundred seats in next week’s local elections.

Mr Cable also said he expected the party to gain key new councils and predicted Cambridgeshire as one area they could make ground..

The former Liberal Democrat leader told Camilla Tominey on GB News: “When you try to make a prediction, a good starting point is what the Conservatives themselves predicted. And they think they are going to lose about 1000 seats. Now that means that when they lose 700 or 800, they are able to claim it was a great victory and it wasn’t as bad as they feared. Now within that context, and we know that Conservatives are going to lose quite a lot of seats, I would be disappointed if the Lib Dems didn’t get gains of several hundreds and win several councils. Cambridgeshire is probably the most promising at the moment.”

Mr Cable also spoke about the Lib Dems policy when it comes to Brexit. He said the party were committed to rebuilding relationships with the EU which, he says, have been damaged by Brexit.

He said: “Our policy on Europe is to rebuild our economic and political relations with the EU which have been very badly damaged by Brexit. I don’t use the word rejoin because I think in time, Europe will look very different. But what the Lib Dems have done is set out a roadmap, building up to the kind of close economic connections we had through the single market, the loss of which is now doing a great deal of damage to the UK economy. We’re not talking about rejoining or just casting aside the existing arrangement, as that would just be impractical, but we do want to rebuild our relationship with Europe.”