The feeling that is most apparent to the Liberal Democrat candidate in Swindon South Matt McCabe as he canvasses voters in the constituency is anger.

He said: “There are a lot of people who are angry with the Conservatives. A lot on the progressive left and centre left.

“But there are a lot of Conservative voters, and Brexit-voting Labour supporters who are also very angry. They voted for Brexit and it hasn’t been delivered the way they wanted, because lots of people wanted different things.

“And they are mainly angry with the Conservatives, but there’s also a lot of anger towards Labour – and a lot of these voters are turning towards Reform.

“It’s mainly to do with wealth inequality but they’re being told that it’s all the fault of immigrants, when it’s just not true.

“It’s our job as Liberal Democrats to present a different vision of Britain, one that is fairer, and freer and more equitable society.”

Mr McCabe who is the cabinet member for planning and housing at Bath & North East Somerset Council demurs slightly when I suggest it sounds like he, and perhaps his party, are now to the left of Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, and says: “We’ve always thought of ourselves as more radical – the radical centre – with different solutions, and Keir Starmer certainly has travelled a long way to make Labour as unthreatening as possible to everyone.”

And one plank of the party’s platforms is clearly close to his heart as a senior councillor responsible for housing: “We’d repeal the right to buy. If a council has to sell a house at anything up to a 70 per cent discount just two years after building it, then it cannot recoup the costs, and there is absolutely no incentive to build council houses.

Everyone has targets to build 300,000 plus houses every year but we haven’t met that target since 1977, and most of those were council houses.

“The only way to meet those targets is to repeal the right to buy and build more council housing.”

The state of Swindon’s town centre is a big issue with voters here, and Mr McCabe says his party’s proposal to abolish business rates, which are paid to partly fund local government will help: “We don’t want to stop people starting businesses by crippling them with taxes before they start.

“There are lots of empty units and people want to start up, abolishing business rates will help that. More businesses will start up, there’ll be more people coming into town centres and therefore less anti-social behaviour.

“And local independent entrepreneurs are who we want opening up in town centres.”

But the party may not be so kind to really big businesses: “We want to rebalance taxation and repeal all the tax breaks to big business and the banks brought in by the Conservatives.

"We believe that capitalism has a debt to society that allows it to flourish. Seek profits, yes, but not at the expense of the society.”

Mr McCabe is under very little illusion about his personal prospects in Swindon South, but his party is doing well in the polls and depending on which you read could conceivably end up being the official opposition, or close to it.

If Labour forms a government, but there are more Lib Dem MPs, what would he like them to do?

He said: “Well, we’re not going to go into coalition, but I’d want us to be a critical friend to a Labour government. The job of opposition at local authority level is scrutiny, in parliament it tends just to be an ugly slanging match.

“We need to scrutinise government. That’s why we need political reform – voting reform for PR, reform the House of Lords and also to make parliamentary standards a legal requirement. Make misleading parliament and offence you can be prosecuted for.”

Other candidates in Swindon South are the defending Conservative Sir Robert Buckland, Labour’s Heidi Alexander, Independent candidate Martin Costello, the Green Party candidate Rod Hebden, and Reform UK candidate Catherine Kosidowski.