In a wetsuit and atop a jet ski, Sir Ed Davey hurtled towards the Brighton shore, descending on the Liberal Democrat conference this week with yet another eye-catching stunt. One can only hope it is the final one in what has been months (years?) of such exploits.
No doubt the party and its press officers would point to the coverage this dramatic arrival generated and say it was a job well done. Would you even know there had been a Lib Dem conference if the jet ski moment hadn’t been broadcast on TV screens and splashed across newspaper pages? Unlikely.
The party are all still behaving like attention-seeking social media influencers
The party loyalists would also say similar about the cringe-inducing entrance for the leader’s closing speech, with Sir Ed entering the stage dancing and singing along to Abba as his MPs jiggled and wiggled behind him. Those same people would point to the success the Lib Dems had at the general election when a series of stunts brought in coverage and voters.
‘Having fun, but with a serious focus,’ is how the party leader described the conference in his keynote speech. ‘It reminds me of our election campaign,’ he added.
Indeed. The difference is that, at that point, Sir Ed was the leader of a plucky underdog party in desperate need of attention during a miserable national campaign. Now he is in charge of 72 MPs, the third biggest party in the House of Commons.
Sir Ed is clearly a game, likable chap. He takes on the stunts with gusto. But with the Conservatives essentially leaderless and in tatters, he and his party should be making their mark by holding the new Labour government to account and advocating for liberal policies. Instead, they are all still behaving like attention-seeking social media influencers. The public’s tolerance for such behaviour is likely to run out soon. In short, it’s time for the Lib Dems and their leader to get serious.
That doesn’t mean adopting the dour, miserable approach of Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, who hopefully had happier personal honeymoons than the one their government is having. Sir Ed’s personality certainly allows him to do better than that. The Lib Dems can position themselves as a more positive alternative. However, they do have to start acting as a party that is able to be in government if required to do so again. As Sir Ed himself put it:
72 Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons, fighting for the freer, fairer, more open society we all want to build.
A wetsuit is hardly a necessary accessory when trying to build such a society. It would be nice if the Lib Dems remembered that it is now Labour, not the Tories, who are in government. In his closing speech to conference, Sir Ed mentioned the Conservatives 23 times and Labour just six times. Sir Keir Starmer was named twice, just once more than soon to be backbencher Rishi Sunak and the same number of times as Liz Truss, no longer an MP.
Yes, you can come up with plenty of seemingly clever reasons for these tactics. The Lib Dems are continuing to target the marginal seats where they compete with the Conservatives. They did this to great effect at the general election and need to remind voters in those seats why they backed the Lib Dems and prompt them to do so again.
And, yes, the Lib Dems have opposed the cut to winter fuel allowances. That was an easy one. To be a serious, constructive opposition, as Sir Ed repeatedly claims he wants his party to be, they are going to have to go further and push back against the government more and advocate for real liberal policies.
In his four years as leader, Sir Ed has turned around the fortunes of the Lib Dems, from a rump whose leader lost her seat at the last election to having 72 MPs on the green benches. Now is the time to cash in on all that hard work by stopping the stunts, getting serious and having some influence in opposition against a Labour government that seems to want to talk down the country and ban everything.
The reality is that at the general election there was a chunk of people who voted not for the Lib Dems but against the Tories. Those voters will now want to see that their decision has gone towards electing a serious set of politicians, not a circus.
Comments