Ed Davey was on Laura Kuenssberg for the second Sunday in a row to talk about the local election results. It was a good interview but I have one rather large note for him at the end.
Kuenssberg challenged him on the fact that our vote share didn’t move? Shouldn’t you have been hoovering up in share of the vote, she asked. Here is how the interview unfolded:
We had a fantastic night, Laura, winning a majority in Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Shropshire, becoming the largest party in and almost winning in Gloucestershire, Devon, Hertfordshire and Wiltshire so we were very pleased with our results. We are now the second party in local government, overtaking the Conservatives and I think we are on track to overtake the Conservatives at the next General Election so whichever way you look at it, it was a great result for the Liberal Democrats.
LK You are in the leafiest place I have ever seen, you are very obviously targeting leafy Middle England but does that mean that you have given up on other parts of the country
Ed:
I think Middle England is the rest of the country. It is the whole country. It is the vast majority of people who want common sense, practical policies to fix the things that need fixing whether it’s potholes or social care.
We are now the official opposition in County Durham. It was the Conservatives and Labour who lost seats to Reform there. We actually gained seats and we are going to hold Reform to account. In Hull and East Riding we didn’t quite get over the line there but it was a brilliant team performance. In next year’s local elections in many of those northern cities I expect us to do well. Actually it was in the south where Reform got beaten, the Liberal Democrats holding back Reform in places like Buckinghamshire.
I am really proud. I think this is a massive step forward for the Liberal Democrats. I think that it’s our community politics, our focus on the issues that matter to people is coming through. I’m proud that the Liberal Democrats are taking on Reform and I think it could work if we can show that their support for people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk actually isn’t very popular. Look what Mark Carney did in Canada, defeating a hard right opponent by standing up for patriotism for Canada. Anthony Albanese in Australia defeating the hard right candidate who liked Trump.
If we can expose the fact that Nigel Farage is so keen on Donald Trump that will mean that Liberal Democrats will come through. I have been very disappointed in the fact that Labour and Conservatives have almost copied Reform and moved towards Reform. I think we should call them out for what they stand for.
LK Nigel Farage said he took his inspiration from the Liberal Democrats, would you take any inspiration from him.
Ed
He clearly doesn’t share our values and we don’t share his. I think what’s going to happen now that they have to run Councils, we will see what they do. In the election, Farage said they would cut finding for special educational needs and disabled children and young people. I think families across the country will be really worried by that.
When polls closed, he said he wanted to ape Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s policies in town halls. If he’s really going to do what he says on climate change, he’ll stop insulation programmes that keep people’s homes warm and energy bills down.
It’s only the Liberal Democrats taking on this divisive, populist politics.
He finished by asking people to Google “Let’s join the Liberal Democrats”
I bet you can guess what my big note is.
I think Middle England is the rest of the country. It is the whole country.
Nope. Just nope.
That screaming you hear is virtually every Scottish and Welsh Lib Dem, along with many beyond the home counties.
I played it to my husband who doesn’t really take much notice of Sunday morning political interviews and he groaned.
In the context of the current crop of elections, you can kind of understand why he said that in that we have appealed to liberal minded Tories who are horrified by Reform.
What he is essentially saying is that we are going for the centre ground.
I hope that he will drop that “middle England” phrase and find a better way of describing the kind of voter we are appealing to across the whole UK. With devolved elections coming up next year, it is not helpful. It’s not as if Plaid and the SNP are going to print the whole nuanced quote and I want to see our people advance our whole agenda and not have to spend the first 30 seconds of a 90 second clip dealing with that.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
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12 Comments
Interesting that Ed mentions Trump four times, more than any other politician.
Yesterday’s Spectator article headed “Australian election: Trump helps topple second conservative leader” is a good read in an unexpected source.
Caron, I also cringed a bit over “Middle England” because this group is generally considered to be socially conservative and not aligned with us on internationalism and Brexit.
Perhaps we could say middle income. Then we can say, whatever your social views, we want to fix the economy for you, so you and your children can afford a home and a few luxuries. As I said in my post today, that’s what most of us, including Middle England, really want.
“I think Middle England is the rest of the country. It is the whole country.” ???
Ed might be better apologising to the people of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland sooner rather than later.
They are part of the UK too!
Caron – if Ed had said “Middle Britain” rather than “Middle England”, would this have been OK in your eyes, or would it still have been seen north of the border, and west of Offa’s Dyke and the Irish Sea, as problematic?
Tom,
You are of course perfectly right about Ed’s reference to “middle England”, which is going to lose us potential support in Scotland and Wales next year.
Equally annoying is the target of “overtaking the Conservatives at the next General Election”. As I have pointed out before in this column, this is a pointless aim if the Conservative Party is by then no longer the main recipient of centre-right votes (and possibly, may have imploded before 2029). Also worrying is the implication that the LibDems should be seeking to replace the Conservatives as the ‘moderate’ alternative on the centre-right. This will put off many people who could otherwise provide support from the radical (non-Marxist) left as the Labour Party contracts. Do we intend to leave that source of support to the Greens?
Tom; “….. middle income. Then we can say, whatever your social views, we want to fix the economy for you, so you and your children can afford a home and a few luxuries. As I said in my post today, that’s what most of us, including Middle England, really want”.
Who are “us”? How many people are below “middle income” and how dare you write them off?
Regarding the reference to ‘Middle England’: If Ed had been in Scotland talking about Scottish elections and talked about ‘the whole country’ (in a context in which it clearly meant, the country of Scotland) no-one would see it as a problem. Ditto if it was Wales. So why should it be a problem if he’s in England talking about English elections and in that context he refers to ‘Middle England’ etc.?
@Rif: If the LibDems successfully target the Conservatives and replace the Conservatives as the party that centre-right people vote for, then you’ll probably have 60%+ of the electorate voting for one of the ‘progressive’ parties, with the Conservatives+Reform able to get no more than 40% between them. If on the other hand the LibDems choose to steer left and start fighting the Greens for votes, causing most centre-right people to vote Conservative as the least bad option for them, then you’ll likely see the majority of votes going to right wing parties, with the possibility of the Conservatives+Reform routinely getting more than 50% of the vote between them. Which outcome do you think is better?
Have people seen this very interesting video by the Labour supporting and anti-brexit influencer Phil Moorhouse about what the Lib Dems should do next? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xznBHRnzFCc
It is titled “Can Lib Dems step up for Tory collapse?” Is he right that we are failing on the social media front?
We could see the rise of Reform as an opportunity. As the change in the electoral landscape alters voting habits, people will reappraise traditional voting patters and increasingly compare us directly with them. There is a large sector of the electorate that will instinctively prefer what we offer.
When Ed says ‘Middle Engand’ he means leafy, Tory leaning South/South East England.
Do you think Caron that these lines haven’t been worked out and tested for the impact they have? It’s not an accident he uses that language.
He has done a superb job of making the Liberal Democrats into succesful, seat winning party for moderate centrists, just not a radical progressive reforming Liberal party.
@ Hywell “Do you think Caron that these lines haven’t been worked out and tested for the impact they have? It’s not an accident he uses that language”….. Depends who did that for him, Hywell, and what it tells you about them.
My word of caution is about eggs in one basket. Beware when the Tory tide comes back in – as it inevitably will……..they’re already calling meetings to defenestrate Badenoch ….. so watch out for a gobby Farage amalgamation.
Agree with you about making the Liberal Democrats into a successful (for now), seat winning party for moderate centrists, just not a radical progressive reforming Liberal party (as it was for most of my life)..
The Canadian Liberals seem to have succeeded by abandoning some of the polices advocated by the predecessor of their new leader who seems to be a moderate centrist. Maybe that is what many voters are looking for. They could have voted for the more radical New Democrats but they did not. The Conservatives improved on their previous votes but did not win either.