Over on Politics Home, there is an in-depth interview with Ed Davey.
Their journalist Tali Fraser covers a broad range of topics with Ed from his personal story, his passion for carers, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, energy policy and our recent by-election successes.
Ed has this verdict on the current situation:
“The fundamental issue is about the Conservative Party. They’ve run out of ideas, and they’re just trashing our economy.” What would the Liberal Democrats do differently? “In or out of government we will say the same thing and that is, first of all, we’ve got to turn the economic mess around. People are really hurting out there. People in my constituency talk about the rise in their mortgage payments already. They are absolutely scared of what will happen,”
You can read the full article here.
* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
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9 Comments
Glad to see him get some media attention but very disappointed not to hear him say even one sentence about what our policies on energy and the economy are all about. Keir Starmer suffers from not saying much about what Labour stands for, but even he recently said he wants green economic growth and jobs.
I knew SirEd had to look after his son but had little idea about his mother and grandmother. Social care could be where we can develop a distinctive policy backed up by his experiences.
My concern about Ed is his unwillingness to talk about Brexit. There is massive buyers regret about the 2016 vote. A significant majority of the electorate now favour the UK rejoining the EU. The Tories and Labour, for different reasons, are both in denial about this reality. There’s a huge opportunity for the Lib Dems to campaign vigorously for a less punishing relationship with the EU. We can win many soft Tory and Labour votes by doing this. Why do we hear nothing from our leader on this opportunity to carve out an issue which is ours and chimes with the electors?
Leekliberal. Up to a point I agree. My late dad was in a home in Cornwall. He had 2 Rumanian nurses who doted on him. They went home because of Brexit and have not been replaced.Because of that the home closed. My earlier point about social care can also include a Brexit dimension.
Ed Davey interview:
‘I made my priority very clear,
and it is to beat Conservative MPs’!
That is pure hubris
(i.e. similar to so much of our efforts in 2019 and earlier):
1. The next UK election will be Con/Sunak vs Lab/Starmer
(i.e. with LD/Davey irrelevant).
2. The most recent projections by Electoral Calculus (i.e. as-of 2022-10-06)
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/prediction_main.html
suggests a default outlook of Con with 48 seats and Lab with 506 seats
(i.e. with Lab establishing an overwhelming landslide ‘elected dictatorship’):
Thus:
a. Up until and including the next UK election,
Con/Sunak will continue to trash the UK from the right
(i.e. with LD/Davey remaining irrelevant).
b. Following the next UK election,
Lab/Starmer will trash the UK from the left
(i.e. with LD/Davey remaining irrelevant).
3. The sole worthwhile priority for LD/Davy
must be a cross-party campaign for constitutional reform
(i.e. specifically excluding Con and Lab):
a. Up until and including the next UK election,
the campaign must focus solely on
a tactical voting arrangement
to force a hung Commons
(i.e. to thereby make LD/Davey relevant
following that next UK election).
b. Following the next UK election,
the campaign must focus solely on
a confidence and supply arrangement
(i.e. specifically moderating one of Con or Lab)
to force constitutional reform
(i.e. to thereby make LD/Davey relevant
following the subsequent UK election).
I’m not sure I will vote Lib Dem if they don’t start speaking up for much closer relations with the EU and single market.
If you are seeking an economically moderate, internationalist, Pro European party that stands up for individual rights and civil liberties then you are disenfranchised at the moment because no party offers that.
@Tim Knight “Following the next UK election, Lab/Starmer will trash the UK from the left”
To be fair, Starmer has given no indication of whether he will be trashing the UK from the left, the right or the centre!
@Tim Knight: How is it hubristic to state a an objective? Ed doesn’t give some off-the-wall seat tally (as our previous leadership was prone to doing), he merely says he wants to pick up seats from the Tories. This isn’t hubris, it’s reality — all but 2 of our realistic target seats are Tory-held (of the remainder, one is SNP and the other Labour).
I would not expect present polling to be reflected in a general election, which is most likely to be in 2 years. This government is likely to hang on until the bitter end, much like the Major government did. The Tories will probably have recoveed some support by then, but not enough to win. The most likely result of the next GE will be a repeat of 1997, except for Scotland which will remain an SNP stronghold making it difficult for Labour to win an overall majority.
Seat predictions based on mathematical formulae don’t take account of local factors. Electoral Calculus seems to have Labour winning seats where they barely have any local presence at all. That isn’t going to happen; some are more likely to fall to the Lib Dems. How the Lib Dems do will depend on our targeting strategy and tactical voting.
People will only vote tactically if it is completely clear that Labour have no chance. That won’t be the case in seats like Wimbledon where although we were only 623 votes behind the Tories Labour got 23% so they could overtake us to win.
Tactical voting in 1997 was a bit of a myth, where we won seats it was mainly because the Tory vote collapsed into the Labour vote not because of targeting etc.