Whilst those in the media world and the Westminster bubble speculate about the future of our party leader, Ed Davey, Ed focused on what matters most – a plan to end the squeeze on middle-income earners, put hundreds of pounds back in the pocket of millions of people, and take ordinary workers out of paying the higher tax rate that was designed for stockbrokers.

Ed announced that the Liberal Democrats would raise the tax-free personal allowance to £15,000 and increase the higher rate threshold from £50,270 to £56,000. He said that would mean taking two million more people out of paying tax altogether and giving most taxpayers a £680 tax cut.

£680 doesn’t sound like much to some people, but to others, it means a great deal more – carers doing early morning calls and spending a chunk of their wage keeping a car on the road. Lads on nights in the warehouses off the M62. People on the tills doing 30 hours and still checking the banking app before they go shopping. Taxi drivers who’ve watched fuel, insurance and licence costs go up while fares haven’t kept pace. For them, £680 is a couple of months of gas and electric. It’s school shoes without putting them on a card.

What gets me is that many of these people have been paying more tax for years without anyone announcing it. The allowance has been frozen, so when your wage goes up just to keep up with prices, more of it gets taxed. You don’t feel any richer, but you pay more. Under the current plans that freeze runs until 2031. Ed’s plan would lift it.

He didn’t pretend this is only about low earners, either. The higher rate change helps people on better wages, and some will say that’s where a lot of the money goes. That’s a fair point. But in towns and cities across our nation, the people creeping over £50,000 aren’t bankers. They’re senior nurses, teachers who’ve moved up to deputy head, engineers who’ve been with the same firm for twenty years. Ed said a ‘tax band designed for stockbrokers is now holding back teachers and nurses’, and I think most people would recognise that.

The question everyone asks is how you pay for it, and I’d rather a politician answered that than dodged it. Ed said it wouldn’t come from more borrowing, tax rises or spending cuts that never happen, but from the growth that comes from a new partnership with Europe. The party estimates rejoining the single market and customs union would add about 0.5 per cent to the economy.

Compare it with the other offer. Reform have promised the same £15,000 allowance. But they would pay for it by ripping £22 billion of support away from disabled people. There are thousands of people across our nation who look after a disabled relative. Giving them a tax cut with one hand and taking their support away with the other isn’t a deal I would want.

There’s a track record here too. In coalition, the Lib Dems pushed for increase in the personal tax allowance and people on low wages noticed the difference. Whatever your thoughts are of the coalition, that policy worked.

I am not saying one speech changes everything. The party still has a lot to do to be heard. But for once I heard a leader talk about the money in working people’s pockets and explain where it would come from. That’s more than most have managed.

Well done, Ed.

* Kamran Hussain is the former Chair of Yorkshire & Humber Lib Dems and former Party Vice Presidential Candidate