In a strong appearance on The Sunday Morning Show, Ed Davey called on the Government to hold a cost of living summit in No 10, a work event, not a party, if you like.
He called for a windfall tax on energy companies and said that if the Conservatives had stuck with the policies he introduced when he was Energy Secretary, our bills would be £2.5 billion. You can watch the whole thing here:
He was challenged by Sophie Raworth on his tweet:
A stitch up between the Met leadership and Number 10 will damage our politics for generations and it looks like it is happening right in front of our eyes.
Ed replied that he had respect for rank and file police officers who put their lives on the line to keep us safe. For them to do their job, the public have to have confidence in them and the way the Met has handled this has undermined that.
He took us through the Met’s actions of the past few weeks, first saying they wouldn’t investigate the Downing Street Parties, then they said they might but wanted to let Sue Gray get on with her report, then they would investigate but Sue Gray’s report could be published in full and then they changed their minds for a fourth time and said that Sue Gray’s report had to wait for their investigation to be completed. “This is chaos, absolute chaos.” It might be cock up, he added, but it could also be something much worse.”
He said that he had called for an investigation by the Metropolitan Police several weeks ago. If they had done that then, they would have completed their investigation and we wouldn’t have the paralysis in Government that we are seeing now.
He said that nobody wanted the Met to make such a hash of this and had a go at Boris.
“We have a Prime Minister who has broken the rules and lied about it to Parliament. No-one trusts this Prime Minister. It’s why I’ve called very strongly that he should resign.”
You have to hand it to Ed Davey. The poor man has had Covid since Monday but he hasn’t let it stop him contributing to and celebrating our historic by-election victory in North Shropshire.
He might have been stuck indoors but he maraphoned like a trooper.
Perhaps the only benefit of his self isolation is that he is unlikely now to get a Council Tax Bill from Shropsire Council given how much time he has spent there in the past month.
Covid is not much fun, even when you are fully vaccinated and boostered as Ed is, but he has stepped up to …
A wee treat for your commute today, or to have on in the background while you work from home.
New Scottish Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton was the guest on this week’s Political Party podcast hosted by Matt Forde.
It’s a brilliant chat, incredibly serious and moving in places, absolutely hilarious in others. At the start, Matt Forde warns us that it includes Alex’s account of a man who died by suicide in front of him a few years back. It’s one of the reasons he has been so persistent in questioning the Scottish Government on their lack of a suicide prevention strategy or lack of mental health support.
Willie Rennie has done two major interviews this weekend talking about his decision to stand aside as Scottish Liberal Democrat leader and his hopes for the future.
It is to be hoped that Mr Rennie remains active in public life. He has been a cheerful voice for a more decent politics and his brand of low-key, relaxed liberalism is more necessary than ever. After a summer running in the hills he should return to the fray, ready to play his part in building a bigger and better centre.
Willie spoke to Magnus Linklater for the paper (£) and talked about his hope that Labour and the Lib Dems would work more closely together to present a progressive, pro-UK alternative to the nationalism and populism of the SNP and Conservatives:
“I think working together with Labour on issues of common interest would be a good thing,” he said in an interview with The Times. “I wouldn’t run before we can walk. But build confidence between the parties and also amongst the electorate to show we’re getting our act together.”
This is about trying to show that for middle Scotland there is something better and stronger than the Conservatives or the SNP, that it’s got energy, it’s got momentum, it’s got ideas, and that’s the most important thing, so people know that if they vote for it, it will be worth it,” he added. “The actual mechanism is less important — it’s the energy behind it that matters.”
He talked about how much Scotland had changed in the past decade or so – and not for the better:
We stand for key principles on civil liberties, social justice, the environment.
We are not getting that through to voters
We need to listen and understand why people don’t think that they are on their side.
"I think it's very important that we listen and we shape our agenda – with our liberal values – to the concerns and fears, hopes and dreams of the British people." – @EdwardJDavey#Ridgepic.twitter.com/26v49xTPhQ
He talked about how he started his listening exercise by doing a 3 hour lunch shift in a Stockport fish and chip shop. He argued that this listening exercise is the way we can make ourselves relevant to people.
Sophy Ridge asked what was our single radical policy to cut through to people.
Jo Swinson has given two major press interviews in the past two days – one to Scotland on Sunday talking about her fight to retain her East Dunbartonshire seat and one to The Times (£) which is more about what she and the Liberal Democrats offer nationally – an open hearted, open minded outward-looking liberal country.
In the Times piece, she talks about the unique Lib Dem offer:
The 39-year-old leader of the Liberal Democrats is from a different generation to Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn (16 years younger than the prime minister and 31 years younger than the Labour leader) with a baby and a five-year-old to juggle on the campaign trail while her husband is away on business. She brought a bubble machine and popcorn maker to the Lib Dems’ election launch. “I think I am quite different to the other leaders,” she says. “They’ve all got an outlook which is very much harking back to the past, whether that’s the 1870s or the 1970s, and I’m very focused on the future we build, one that is open-hearted, open-minded, outward-looking, internationalist and liberal.”
And she tackles the issue of this week, which has been attacks from Labour for not standing down in their favour:
For those still in the Labour Party, many are conflicted but ultimately they are standing on a platform to get the hard left and Jeremy Corbyn into No 10 . . . Labour is not a party of Remain.” As for the Brexit Party standing down candidates in Tory-held seats, she says: “It sends a very clear message to moderate One Nation Conservatives about where Boris Johnson is — he is at one with Nigel Farage and there are a lot of Conservative voters who are very unhappy at that.”
She also describes the challenges of returning to work as a minister after maternity leave.
In the Scotland on Sunday piece, she talked about how she was on the side of most people in her East Dunbartonshire seat:
“Both are live issues – and that’s different to 2017 when it was much more about the prospect of an indyref. Now, with where the Brexit process has got to, people are much more concerned about that.
“This is a constituency where around two-thirds of people voted to stay in the UK, and are around three-quarters voted to stay in the EU. It’s very clear that people in East Dunbartonshire want Scotland to stay in the UK and the UK to be in the EU. It’s only the Liberal Democrats that are standing up for that position.”
And when she’s going round the doors, her constituents like her new role as leader:
By Caron Lindsay
| Sat 21st September 2019 - 1:00 pm
Jo Swinson has talked to Alastair Campbell for GQ magazine. They met twice. Once on 27th August and then after the Parliamentary drama on 3-4 September.
You can watch the whole thing on You Tube:
The written transcript is here. but you need to watch the video to get the whole thing.
It’s well worth 47 minutes of your time to see a thoughtful conversation which ranges from Brexit to Scottish independence and why people are turning to the Liberal Democrats:
Tens of thousands joined the Lib Dems since the start of May because people want someone that speaks to those small “l” liberal values for opportunity, internationalism, equality, fairness, treating people as individuals.
The biggest reason she can’t deal with Boris:
I don’t think he cares! I think he really doesn’t care. What he did in the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe just makes me furious. He doesn’t seem to show any kind of remorse or feel bad about it – he says he feels anguish, but he shows no evidence of it whatsoever. All he cares about is Boris Johnson and becoming prime minister and he was prepared to say whatever it took to get him into Number Ten. One of the reasons I have stood for leadership of my party is that I think the public needs a better choice. At the next election, the offer of Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn is not good enough. That’s why I’ve set out ambitious plans for the Liberal Democrats, that we are aiming for government and I am a candidate for prime minister, because I think the country needs us to be doing that.
And why she thinks she is the best candidate for PM:
When I joined the Liberal Democrats I didn’t think that I would be sitting here today and talking about potentially becoming prime minister and running for that, but when I look at Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn, hand on heart, I am very confident I could do a better job than either of them. We have got a no-deal Brexit around the corner; we have a climate emergency that we have less than 12 years to tackle; we have got poverty in our communities; we have real problems with our politics more generally. I genuinely feel we need to make sure that the Liberal Democrats can be that home for people with liberal values who want and demand and deserve something better than either Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn.
Alastair then makes the mistake of mentioning how difficult it must be for her because she has young kids:
AC: That feels very hard to me. Two young children, including your baby, taking on the leadership of a party.
JS: Hang on, did Tony Blair not have a baby when he was prime minister, I seem to recall?
AC: He did.
JS: Yeah. I mean, men do do this. It has been known.
When they met on 6th September, Alastair asked Jo if she thought Boris Johnson had fascist tendencies:
I am not going to put that label on him. You have to be careful with language. But I found the imagery of that speech in front of police officers, where he was effectively saying he might not obey the rule of law, very worrying. The juxtaposition was quite sinister. It felt rather authoritarian.
There was an interesting discussion about the risks of splitting the opposition vote:
Layla Moran ht the headlines this week when Tory MPs jeered her as she got up to ask the Prime Minister a question.
She’s now been speaking to Times Red Box about the issues that matter to her.
She talks about her Palestinian heritage:
She is also the first member of parliament of Palestinian descent, through her mother, a Christian whose relatives became a “typical diaspora family” after they were forced out of their home in Jerusalem.
She has already been adopted an unofficial ambassador for the Palestinian community in parliament, but is reluctant to be defined solely by her heritage. “I think I could not get away with not being an ambassador for the Palestinian people but that wasn’t why I was elected. It was to fight for education and the NHS.”
Ms Moran says there is a desire amongst Palestinians to show a different face to the world. “They want people to see that unlike refugee-ridden, poor, downtrodden peoples, in fact Arabs are very proud of our culture and we are intelligent and articulate and talking about that things that matter like education and health.”
The former Liberal Democrat MP and government minister discusses his new book about the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government, says what he would do differently in hindsight, and looks into his crystal ball to see what the future holds for the party…
Your new book about the Coalition has certainly made a few waves following its Sunday newspaper serialisation – the right kind of waves?
I think inevitably there is a temptation in the press to shed light on things which are currently topical, such as Tory divisions on the referendum. But the primary reason I wrote the book was to give an accurate, historic account of the Coalition and a proper explanation of our part in it – and if the serialisation results in more people reading the book, so much the better.
It sounds like you’re, by and large, proud of what the Lib Dems achieved in government?
Yesterday, Nick Clegg did a long and quite technical interview with Andrew Neil on the Sunday Politics. They talked about the fragility of the economy, measures taken by the Coalition to boost construction and manufacturing and the Green Investment Bank. They also talked about Nick’s decision to kill off the so-called Snoopers’ Charter. Neil showed him quotes from senior police officers and he said quite unequivocally that the Police had enough powers already. You can watch the whole interview here and for a quick summary, I’ve done a collection of my tweets on Storify.
Party President Tim Farron has been talking to the Huffington Post about everything from the local election results, the presentation errors in the Budget, his leadership ambitions, potential coalition deal breakers and exit strategies.
He is adamant that Lords Reform will be delivered within this Parliament:
“The coalition agreement is not something that you can pick and choose from,” he says. “If people believe that Lords reform is something that can be dispensed with, for instance, or that it’s tolerable for the Tory whips to not deliver a majority or a diluted Bill, it does bring into a question of trust, and
Robin Stafford An excellent summary thank you John, which I’ve shared with others.
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