No more cuddly Lib Dems as Ed Davey vows to ‘consign Tories to history books’

No more cuddly Lib Dems as Ed Davey says he wants to ‘consign the Tories to the history books’

Transcript

00:00Given the way Ed Davey carried out the general election campaign, there was little of too

00:03much surprise in his speech to conference this afternoon. He's heavily, heavily focused

00:08on the NHS, so he's calling on the Labour government to winter-proof the health service

00:12to avoid the annual winter crises which we see in the NHS. He also touched on the issue

00:18of Brexit. He called on the government to fix Britain's broken relationship with the

00:23European Union. He wants a youth mobility scheme which is effectively free movement

00:27for 18-35 year olds. And Ed Davey did say that it was a mistake for Keir Starmer to

00:33rule out rejoining the single market, so that's something he's going to be piling pressure

00:37on the government to consider as well. Given it was such a focus of the Lib Dems election

00:42campaign as well, he touched on Britain's waterways and our natural environment. He

00:45called for greater environmental protections and promised during this government to campaign

00:50heavily on the issue of the sewage scandal. So Ed also lashed out at the Conservative

00:55party. He said they're now so out of touch with the voters that they lost at their 2024

00:59election and set out his plans to leapfrog them and become the official opposition by

01:05the next election. Little mention was made of Labour in the speech. He did attack the

01:10doom and gloom and urged Sir Keir Starmer to be more positive, but Sir Ed's in a difficult

01:14position because he doesn't want to alienate those Lib Dem voters who backed the party

01:18this time on the understanding that they would be helping Sir Keir Starmer to be elected.

01:23He's also very conscious of the fact that to overtake the Tories at the next election

01:26he needs to win Tory seats and so wants to focus his energy more on attacking the Conservatives

01:31than attacking the Labour party.