Not going to lie, I don’t often punch the air and squeal during Ed Davey interviews, but he has just been fabulous on BBC Breakfast.
I watched the scenes from the White House last night with a growing sense of anxiety that Trump’s appeasement of Putin was being presented as a good thing and a positive step forward. While it was great to see Zelensky go mob-handed with his European supporters, this did not hide the unfairness and injustice in what was being asked of him and his country: that he should give up vast swathes of territory to an aggressor who had helped himself to it, committing atrocities along the way.
I wanted someone to call out the BS. And along comes Ed on BBC Breakfast and says almost exactly my thoughts.
He said that the idea of Ukraine giving up so much land was “À price we cannot allow Ukraine to pay,” adding “If you appease an aggressor we know from history that this ends in a bad way.”
On the proposed trilateral meeting with Trump and Zelensky, he said:
“it should worry us. They are essentially asking Zelensky to sit down with a war criminal who has invaded Ukraine and continues to kill innocent Ukrainians.”
While he praised Keir Starmer for keeping the European alliance together, he said that now was the time to step up our support for Ukraine, not freeze it:
“We need to be stronger in calling out some of the concessions that Trump has already given and I would like to see the UK saying that we would give more support to Ukraine” suggesting giving them typhoon jets and frozen Russian assets.
The interview then turned to the proscription of Palestine Action. Ed set out the Lib Dem position. He said that Labour had not made the case for proscription and while he acknowledged that there may be some things that the Home Secretary had not said publicly, it was the job of an opposition party to hold them to account.
Palestine Action has committed criminal acts and need to be prosecuted for them. They are a very worrying organisation. What we and many others found troubling was that innocent people exercising their freedom of speech and right to protest in a peaceful way in Parliament Square were arrested en masse.
He set out how we have written to the Independent Reviewer of terrorism legislation to express our concern that there may need to be a change in the law.
Anyone who believes in the traditional British values of freedom of speech and the right to peaceful protest should be very worried and I hope will get behind the Liberal Democrat call.
On this issue, I do think he could have been a bit stronger in calling out the absurdity of pensioners holding placards being bundled into Police vans. Our job as a liberal party is to be very strong in standing up for the right to protest and I feel like it has taken us too long to get to this position.
But, a very good interview from Ed this morning, saying what needed to be said about Ukraine.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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11 Comments
If what is is being said about Russia asking Ukraine to cede territory essential to its security is true this is appeasement pure and simple.
It is essential we and the other European states increase defence spending quickly and effectively. What the US has to understand is that if Europe (including us) cannot rely on the US for our security, it becomes much harder for us and the rest of Europe to contribute to security in the Pacific.
As a liberal party we should also oppose those who commit violent acts while claiming to exercise the right to protest. Palestine Action seem to be in this category
The issue of hostile states targeting Western media is well known. The run up to the EU referendum is a well known example of this.
Articles on LDV seem to receive a flurry of posts repeating Kremlin talking points. I read a variety of political blogs and seeing people mention much discredited talking points such as 2014 coups, breaching Minsk agreement, persecution of Russian speakers, NATO encroachment, etc., is very rare. Hopefully LDV have taken a range of precautions to prevent targeting by hostile states.
Look, you are going to have to stop saying ethical, sensible, morally sound things or else I’m going to have to start voting for your party. God knows I’d love to stop voting for the shower currently in Govt despite my agreement with what they used to stand for.
I heard SirEd this morning and he was articulate and strong. No one can accuse him or us now of wishy washy fudge and mudge approach. More of this please!
@ Tristan Ward
The situation Ukraine faces is terrible. It knows it is slowly losing the war and now has to chose between surrendering another 6,000 square kilometres as the price of ending the war, or chose to fight on and possibly lose even more. Agreeing to give up land under such duress is not a free choice, but losing even more land is worse.
@Brenda Will: splendid, yet another post regretfully supporting Ukraine giving up chunks of land, because it’s “losing”.
Giving up chunks of land will only encourage Russia to attack again later.
Have you not noticed there is a high cost for this war to Russia too?!
Considering a land sacrifice for the sake of a durable peace isn’t necessarily appeasement. Trump ruling out demanding a ceasefire first is certainly appeasement. Russia need to be forced to show, first, that they are actually prepared to stop firing and agree a credible peace deal.
Merz made that point effectively, without offending anybody’s brittle ego. Let’s hear more from Merz.
Very well said Ed
@Brenda On August 15th British defence intelligence published an update arguing that, on current rates of advance, it would take Russia 4.4 more years to take all four of the provinces it has illegally annexed (Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson) and that, on current casualty rates—which we analysed in July—this would incur 1.9m more casualties, dead and wounded, on top of the 1.06m so far. The implication is that Mr Putin should not win at the negotiating table what he is unlikely to be able to take on the battlefield. (The Economist newsletter) And just reminding that since the autumn Ukrainian counteroffensive reclaimed territory seized by Russia in the early stages of the full-scale war Russia has taken UNDER 1% of further territory in three years.
Why is there never any mention of the Budapest Memorandum? In return for Ukraine, Kazahkstan and Belarus giving up their nuclear weapons, the USA, UK and Russia guaranteed the teritorial borders of the 3 countries from both threats and economic coercion. The Memirandum was later ratified by the UN and is the basis of the sanctions imposed on Russion in 2014 after their ibvasion of Crimea. Trump’s display in the White House earlier this year was an example of the USA breaking the agreement with his economic coercion of Ukraine. The security guarantees are already in place but Russia ignored them – just as they will ignore any future guarantees if they want to because bo one wants to poke the bear. We are supposed to learn from history – we are at a point similat to the appeasement of Hitler in 1938 and we know what happened there…