There’s an Ed Davey double page spread in the Guardian today. Zoe Williams narrates a visit to Ed’s home and a thorough and wide-ranging interview.
There’s this comment about serving in government with the Tories:
“I didn’t trust them an inch. I didn’t trust George Osborne an inch. We didn’t tell people how much we were fighting the Tories, that was by design, from Nick [Clegg]. He wanted to show that coalitions work. I argued that we should show the bit of the Liberals that’s anti-establishment, that’s reformist, that’s internationalist. But he was the leader. We served at his pleasure.”
You can read the full article here.
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Very moving interview.
In my three years as a Lib Dem, I have met Sir Ed Davey quite a bit, including a 1-1 lunch. Incredibly decent person.
I wasn’t involved in the internal workings of the Coalition but for a good insight I’d advise people read Coalition by David Laws. It does show some of the internal disagreements with the Tories.
Given possibility of a hung parliament and the likely attack on PR”
/”warnings” against coalition (coalition of chaos) from the Toroes, it may be useful to point out that the 2010-15 coalition was a period of stable government and compare it to the chaos since 2015.
I am not normally a Libdem voter but I have been interested in leasehold problems for some time, I will vote tactically to get rid of this government which is rotten to the core and have now u turned on lhold reform, I would ask if there is going to be a join up with Labour it would be great if your good leader could emphasise to Labour that there are many lholders ready to vote for whichever party will get rid of leasehold tenure.
Thanks rgds Bob.
Not a good negotiating tactic.
Labour have no incentive to offer us anything, they now know that we will never do a deal with the Tories
@slamdac
You cannot be serious!
Since it has been eminently clear for some time that LDs would never again do a deal with the tories it has also been eminently clear for some time that there would only ever be any possibility of negotiating with labour if labour doesn’t get a majority at the next general election. And if they don’t get a majority they might end up with no realistic choice except to negotiate with LDs.
I think that this position is right – the Conservatives are exhausted – but I’m not sure it needed saying so openly.
Absolutely essential that Ed has said it clearly – no deals with Tories – as we did in 1997, when there was another very tired and unpopular Tory government.
(It also has the advantage of being true; we are too different and opposed to the Tory party. Scant common ground.)
Our bargaining strength in possible negotiations with Labour doesn’t depend on us being able to go off and link up with the Tories, if Labour don’t give us what we want. It depends on Labour not being able to form a majority government without us.
In the event that Labour go for a minority government, we would have influence in that scenario too, as might the SNP, Plaid etc.
@ Chris Moore
I don’t think it is right to say that Nick Clegg ruled out coalition with the Tories before the 2010 election. It would have been very strange if he had, given that we were at the end of 3 terms of Labour who were looking tired and unpopular.
I’m open to correction of course.
Absolutely the right thing to say. The Lib Dems performance at the next election is dependant on being a get the Tories out party otherwise voters would overlook us and Labour would have no need to look to us.
The Tories in their center ground often proclaim themselves to be one nation Conservative party members but since arriving in Westminster via the coalition they’ve spent more time trying to make UK a one party, Conservative nation.
Keir Starmer appears to be reaching out to this nation with soundbites that George Osbourne could have made, despite the Tories’ cultural view and economic view failing the majority.
It’s nice to read such an interview with Ed Davey who comes across as thoroughly decent. I just hope that when he says “I’m not putting the Tories back in power,” he means “I’m not putting a party that behaves like the Tories back in power,” rather than just focusing on colour of the rosette. I hope the LD team are ready to be ambitious whether in formal coalition or not.
Many people criticise the libdems for choosing the tories in 2010. It was more the case that what happened was the best outcome (at least for the country) given the election result. I’d guess that in 2010 most members would have preferred a lab/lib coalition. With labour supporting libdems gone then the average libdem member became centre right. My sense is that the party has moved to centre left post 2015 and even to the left of Labour. Maybe that’s where the country has gone. Who knows where the Tories are at the minute but my fear is that Lord Finkelstein had a point when he wrote in the Times last week that there is hardly any difference between Labour and Libdem. Which I think is a shame.
I was blubbing my eyes out on the bus to work reading this today. Ed comes over as a really compassionate, loving human being. The bit at the end with John is just lovely.
And on a more minor point, I also love that their house seems to be as untidy as mine.
The erratic character of first past the post means that we have to be prepared for all possibilities and accept that the result that is most amenable to us, a situation where our members can make the difference between a majority and a minority is unlikely.
We can expect to be again the fourth largest party at Westminster, quite likely les than half the size of the SNP. The nightmare for Labour is a result in which they require support from both us and the SNP. Alternatively infighting amongst the Conservative Party could ensure an outright victory for Labour, though with Labour’s own fratricidal tendencies, this also could be fairly precarious.
Although I know it is a difficult topic, I do hope that the Party is able to build informal relations with the SNP in anticipation of a less than clear cut outcome; we really need to avoid ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ situations of the sort, that weakened us at the end of 2019.
@ Tristan Ward: hello, I was talking about 1997, not 2010!!
Before the 97 election, we ruled out any post-election agreement with the Tories. We explicitly abandoned “equidistance”. Rightly so.
And I said nothing about Nick Clegg!
The party has seemed very ambivalent about public services apart from general statements about ‘caring’. This from the party of Beveridge, when the NHS and social care and other public services are struggling terribly after the damage the Tories have caused, with the legacy of the Coalition which still scars the party’s reputation.
Nationally and on the door step it is a huge issue. The party and leadership need to be much more vocal with brutal criticism of the Tories, and ambitious proposals to rebuild them underpinned by Ed’s own story.
I thought it was a very good article and refreshing not to have a few soundbites from an interview focussed on after the election.
As for Ed saying never again with Tories (I forget exact wording) it was the right thing to say. If in 20 or 30 years time there is a different tory party (it will take a long time to get itself sorted if it ever does) then a leader then can denounce what Ed said as times have changed and it won’t worry us!
As for how it was in coalition, I can see now, David Laws coming into a policy working group I was at, to tell us not good news about a negotiation he had been in, won something out of it, but he looked white, and was very shaken. He was visibly upset, and had obviously fought hard and what he had gained probably needed a lot of skill. I am not defending bad decisions made in coalition times, but I recall seeing him that day.
As for Ed, I was not surprised to read what I did. there are some things I disagree with him on, mainly about EU, but he came over as, and I think is, a thoroughly decent man.
Well, well! What a charming piece from the Guardian! Who’d have thought it?
Or was it? Read it again. The Guardian, after all, is not a Liberal newspaper, but THE Labour one.
A Left Wing newspaper, and not averse to undermining any party next door. That cuddly portrait of Ed Davey was surely calculated to damage our leader in the esteem of each “Lib or Lab?” elector pondering his or her approaching Voting Paper.
For a very large slice of the voters in the electoral cake the choice in the end will be “Lib Dem or Labour?”
Or let’s get specific: “Jolly Decent Starmer, or Jolly Decent Davey?”
I sound horrid, I know — but doesn’t the Guardian’s profile sound a bit . . .well, “off”?
You may have seen 3 of our remaining major vehicle manufacturers asking the government to renegotiate the brexit deal because at present and with what is coming, little or none of it will remain in a few years and that is 800,000 well paid jobs mainly in the midlands and north or S.Wales.
The EU require 45% of all components to be UK or EU/EEA made. Without new battery plants there is no chance of this.
We need an active industrial strategy to deal with European market access and purchasing with genuine free trade. Also, training, energy costs, infrastructure, marketing support etc.
Government support on a comparable scale to that in the EU and USA, given the smaller popn. This would enable the setting up of key battery factories. Without these majority cost components of electric cars being made domestically, their future in the UK on any large scale, would be a dead duck.
We have been through the death of the domestic car industry once and managed a reprieve once mainly from Japanese and German firms. That is on the verge of being lost forever and there’s nothing else to replace them.
The car industry is a headline, but there are many other manufacturers with the same or similar problems. The new Industrial Revolution will not happen without intervention. Laissez faire / Singapore on Thames will not cut it.