The Rundown Podcast: Ed Davey Interview — Lib Dems Are Ready To Take On "Indecent" Tories
3 min read
Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey joins PoliticsHome to discuss the fallout from Sue Gray’s final report into the partygate saga, Rishi Sunak’s windfall tax U-turn, and his party’s own plans to take advantage of Boris Johnson’s woes at the polls and force the Tories out of government.
Sir Ed Davey said he wanted to win enough seats at an election to help build a Parliament where “different parties put their ideas together” and replace what he called this “indecent government”.
While he said there had been no formal discussions with Labour about an election pact or a coalition, he said it was simply “rational behaviour” for both parties to put their resources where they have the best chance of winning.
Davey said his party does intend to “take on Labour in areas where we can think we can beat them. If you're a business that's what you go for, where you think your biggest market is".
But, he added: "If you’re an individual you go where you think you can be more successful, it's just rational.”
His comments came in a difficult week for the Tories, after the seismic Sue Gray report into lockdown-breaching parties found a "failure of leadership" had allowed the events to happen.
Davey said the report "confirmed what the British people already knew" and proved that the PM had misled the Commons.
“What was interesting was the quite muted response yesterday from his own back benches," he said.
"We saw a lot of Conservative MPs leaving very quickly, they're almost too embarrassed to listen to the Prime Minister with his faux apologies.”
Davey added that Tory MPs seem to be “in a sort of no man's land”, where they don't want to be seen supporting the Prime Minister because he's “too embarrassing”, but “they're not sure about what to do to get rid of him”.
"I think the danger for Conservative MPs is if they don't make a decision it looks like the party of government is completely indecisive and hasn't got a plan and doesn't know what it's doing.
“And that's extremely bad for the country, and the country comes first, and it's really bad when the party of government is like a rabbit in headlights.”
The Lib Dem leader also commented on the government's U-turn on a windfall tax, a policy Davey had previously proposed in October 2021.
He said the government's had been "dragged kicking and screaming to do something" on the cost of living crisis, but worked that they had failed to "fundamentally" tackle the issue.
"Some of the measures aren't going to come through for quite some time," he warned.
"If they'd listen to opposition, people who are putting forward constructively, in a measured way, our package of putting up a windfall tax and giving a tax cut, that could that could already be helping people now."
"On the windfall tax specifically, I actually don't think he [Rishi Sunak] is raising anywhere near the amount of money needed.
"I know Labour only wanted £2 or 3 billion. I had talked about the £10 billion."
