Tag Archives: sunday with laura kuenssberg

Ed Davey did his traditional start of year interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg this morning. The conversation started with Donald Trump backing down on his disgraceful comments about British troops in Afghanistan.

Ed said he was grateful to the King for his intervention but said that this didn’t change his view of Donald Trump who has supported Putin on Ukraine.

They moved on to discuss defence spending. Ed acknowledged that we do need to act.

Liberal Democrats have argued that we need to increase defence spending. We’ve called on the Government to issue war bonds. The Government hasn’t shown how to increase defence spending by the end of the decade.

We’re in a cold war type scenario.

We need to increase defence spending quickly.

There has to be a question on whether we can rely on the US. With Trump in the White House they are no longer a reliable ally.

Kuenssberg asked him how this would work? Was it Govt borrowing with a fancy name on it?

Ed said that  we should do this over two years and  cap it at £20 billion

Institutional investors and public would be able to buy these to give the  defence industry needs to know that the money is behind it to make plans.

So let’s just step away from the interview for a moment. This seems to be another example of a new policy being announced – a bit like the 7 day guarantee for GP appointments – without any sort of due process in the party. There have been plenty opportunities to talk about, to consult on such an idea internally. Given the amount of surprise I am picking up in the party about today’s announcement, I feel that this could have been handled better

It’s not necessarily a bad idea, but there are ways of ensuring that there is buy-in from the party before making an announcement like this. Then you avoid people feeling like they are being disrespected. There have been concerns about power being grabbed to the centre with no accountability for some time.

Back to the interview now, Ed said that there were other things we need to do on defence given the dramatic changes since the last election which requires a step change. He wants to see things like pushing the Joint Expeditionary Force further and faster and invite Canada to join it.

Kuenssberg asked him whether  we were avoiding a conversation on the amount we are spending on welfare and the NHS

Ed replied:

We are up for these conversations. We have talked about a digital services tax, a European rearmanent bank and we have called for cross party talks on how we get (defence spending) up to 3.5% beyond 2030.

Ed has been pretty bullish on his language on Trump, much more than Starmer has been. Kuenssberg asked him if he would be the same if  he were PM. Would he call him a bully and an international gangster

My language might be a bit more nuanced but my approach would be the same.

He highlighted areas where the UK Government could do more, such as rejoining the Customs Union.

How did Trump back down on Greenland? EU standing together with a bazooka of retaliatory measures.

Trump is so unpredictable. I really worry for America – he is doing huge damage to their economy and their world standing.

He was then challenged on our glacially improving poll ratings and the fact that we have only a third or so of the members of Reform and the Greens. – we have ten times the number of MPs but Green at 170,000 and Reform on 210,000. Ed pretty much said he didn’t care about either.