Yahoo Finance Please welcome the leader of the opposition: Sir Ed Davey
If some polls are to be believed, Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats could soon be the official opposition, here’s what that would look like, according to former Lib Dem advisor Pablo O’Hana
Not since the heady days of Cleggmania has the leader of the Liberal Democrats experienced such a triumphant resurgence. Ed Davey, with his eye-catching stunts, infectious charm and genuine empathy, has set the political stage ablaze and reignited the fire of his party. If a bombshell MRP poll, which put his party ahead of the Conservatives, is correct Davey could walk into Parliament as the Leader of His Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition.
Given that Labour and the Conservatives are reasonably close ideologically in this election, having the Liberal Democrats as the official opposition would provide a genuine alternative, ensuring that Parliament benefits from truly diverse views. It also provides a once-in-a-century chance to rid our country of extremism.
Dare to imagine it: Ed Davey as Leader of the Opposition to Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister, Nigel Farage drowned out, Rishi Sunak gone, and Boris Johnson’s comeback thwarted. This political earthquake would reshape our political landscape. With over a decade of working as a senior political advisor across the UK, Europe, and the US, I can tell you how this is not just exciting but plausible.
The Liberal Democrats are the party of common sense. They represent neither the reactionary right nor the irresponsible left, embodying competence at the local level and prioritising ethical but evidence-based policy at the national level. Over several decades, they have proven effective in local governance, excelling in services like refuse collection, recycling, and infrastructure maintenance, all within ever-reducing budgets.
At the national level, they are very often the party of sensibility and rationality; the only party that sensibly opposed the Iraq War and the only party that rationally and consistently opposed Brexit.
During their admittedly very tough stint in government, they got on with the job. They delivered free school meals and closed the attainment gap for disadvantaged children and care leavers, lifted 3.4m of the lowest earners out of paying income tax, opposed fracking, reduced emissions and powered millions of homes with renewable energy. Lib Dem Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone helped secure same-sex marriage, while Lib Dem MP John Leech led a twice-opposed, near-decade-long campaign to pardon Word War Two hero Alan Turing and more than 75,000 others convicted of homosexuality, and now-leader Ed Davey repealed Section 28. Since then, as the fourth party of opposition with just 11 MPs, they’ve been instrumental in outlawing upskirting, improving renters’ rights and securing landmark holidays for millions of carers.
The point is, regardless of where you sit on Davey’s stunt-oriented party today, the Liberal Democrats punch way above their weight – and their manifesto positions them to the left of Labour on countless issues.
So imagine how much they could do as the official opposition and what that would mean for the future of our country. Davey will immediately address the cost of living by pushing Labour towards more progressive economic policies. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), the Liberal Democrats’ tax and spending plans benefit the least well-off more than any other party’s proposals.
On foreign policy, where Labour and the Lib Dems really diverge, Davey is clear on rebuilding international relationships and taking the UK into the single market to plug the £1m per hour black hole caused by Brexit, costing the average family £2,500 per year.
We can expect the Lib Dems to ferociously oppose Labour’s support of the two-child benefit cap while increasing ambitions on housing and tackling climate change.
Elsewhere, Lib Dems could finally deliver their long-standing pledge to replace our university-obsessed culture with sensible adult education and training, offering a £10,000 grant to support further education outside of traditional routes.
Together, the parties can deliver their radical plans to breathe new life into our NHS, pulling it back from the brink, and urgently invest in our schools, teachers, and education system. Labour will be slowly nudged into a more compassionate position on immigration, increasing cooperation with Europol to control and keep a check on borders.
On democratic engagement, Davey’s emboldened party will finally drag Starmer over the line on desperately needed voting reform, scrapping ID requirements and reducing the voting age to 16. Embracing proportional representation over the outdated and inadequate first-past-the-post might be the only way to unify our country under a coherent government for generations to come.
One issue the two leaders are absolutely united on is returning public service to, well, public service. Reinstating public service to politics exposes the self-serving charlatans of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson for what they are and would lead to their decline in popularity, eventually writing them out for good.
Farage will, of course, decry the elite liberal consensus this fosters. Yet his real fear will be the inevitable and logical resurgence of UK-EU relationships. While rejoining the EU is off the table, the fading benefits of Brexit will continue to revive pro-EU sentiments, and the new Lib Dem Leader of the Opposition can capitalise on the undoing of Brexit, aligning with his party’s longstanding position on the issue — the desperately underappreciated legacy of Tim Farron, whose leadership was unfairly truncated.
Davey’s eye-catching stunts have been a spirited insight into his priorities and captured public attention. But now, he must mark the dawn of a new era. The British public, who share a lack of enthusiasm for both Sunak and Starmer, is desperately seeking a competent, stable government, free from reactionary extreme ideologies lurching between ultra-left to ultra-right.
Ed Davey has successfully rejuvenated his party in this campaign, but his next task is more critical and urgent. He now has a once-in-a-century opportunity to not only transform British politics forever, securing his party’s place as the sensible, effective alternative the country yearns for, but crucially and most importantly, banish Nigel Farage and the extremists to the pages of history.
Pablo O’Hana is a former senior advisor to the Liberal Democrats and three successive leaders. He runs Apostrophe Campaigns, a public relations and creative campaigns agency which specialises in progressive political campaigns and social change. He also worked on the Remain campaign in the EU referendum and the pro-choice campaign for Ireland’s referendum on abortion.
