A KAYAK ON THE RIVER THAMES, England — It’s a sunny August day on the leafy Surrey-London border and Ed Davey is sporting a life-jacket — again.
The leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrats has become synonymous with flying off a paddleboard, or catapulting himself attached to a bungee rope. On the day he meets POLITICO, he pairs his life-jacket with the blue and white striped shirt and navy chinos he was gamely styled in for a daytime TV makeover last summer.
For many politicians, attention-grabbing stunts are tiresome, juvenile activities, reluctantly necessary to keep the media engaged. But Davey, who saw his centrist party leap from 15 to 72 MPs at the last election, has embraced the art form.
Speaking to POLITICO from a kayak on the River Thames, and afterwards on dry land, Davey offers a rare compliment to his political foes, admitting he took inspiration from attention-grabbing right-wing leaders like Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson when he decided to go all-out during last year’s election campaign.
Farage, the insurgent leader of Reform UK, is often snapped grinning with a pint in hand at one of Westminster’s many watering holes. Johnson loved a good photo op — embracing getting stuck on a zipwire while waving union flags.
The Liberal Democrats have historically struggled with cut-through, so Davey has opted to fall into rivers — or on this particular day, nearly crash into a flock of swans — in a bid to change all that.
As Davey paddled down the Thames, one man shouted from the river banks to say hello to the Lib Dem leader, while another later asked for a selfie. “It’s only really happened after the general election,” Davey says, referring to the request for photos and the celebrity afforded to him as Lib Dem leader. He doesn’t seem entirely thrilled by the requests for photos — but smiles and poses with his thumbs-up nonetheless.
In the cut-throat world of Westminster politics, however, some in Davey’s party are starting to question whether the leader’s strategy of cultivating the nice guy image — making bath bombs, doing zumba — will continue to pay electoral dividends.
A poll last week found that just 37 percent of Brits were able to correctly identify a photo of Davey, who has now led the centrist outfit for five years, and even had a spell in government. That was only a slight improvement on Davey’s pre-election recognition level.
A Lib Dem MP, granted anonymity, like others in this piece to speak frankly about internal party matters, moaned that the centrist party is “always on the defensive” and avoids talking about topics it is “uncomfortable” with, such as crime and immigration.
“That drags the entire conversation away from a place that could be much more reasonable to the fringe, because we’ve chosen to be absent because it makes us uncomfortable,” the MP said. “Now is the time for us to go out and be a bit punchy.”
Some more Mr Nice Guy?
Sat in the sun at the Prince of Wales pub in Surbiton, pint of London Pride in hand, Davey concedes there is “definitely” space for his party to ramp up the energy — but he says he’s focused on making sure they don’t say the wrong thing (or “silly” things) just to get media coverage.
“If you start saying things you don’t want to say, in a tone that you don’t want to take, I think you’ll come unstuck,” he warns.
When it comes to drumming up coverage, Davey sees another problem: a media obsession with Reform UK boss Farage, whose party is consistently ahead in national polls but has just five members of parliament, a paltry tally compared to the Lib Dems.
Davey accuses the BBC of “failing in their duty” as Britain’s public service broadcaster, arguing that “anything Farage or Reform does, they think is newsy — and most times it isn’t.”
He tells POLITICO: “You know what I would say to the BBC or any journalist, is who’s the party that’s distinctive on health and care? Who’s the party that’s distinctive on Donald Trump? Who’s party that’s distinctive on Europe?”
A BBC spokesperson has previously rejected this charge, telling PoliticsHome: “In line with Ofcom guidance, the BBC puts greater weight on actual votes. This is consistent with our approach during the last parliament. The Liberal Democrats’ increased representation in the House of Commons has been recognised with more coverage and greater representation on BBC News programmes.”
On Thursday last week, the BBC News homepage gave prominent coverage to Davey’s decision to boycott Trump’s upcoming U.K. state visit.
Still, the ire is shared by Davey’s MPs, who are starting to feel as though their party isn’t being given its due after its record election result.
A second Lib Dem MP bemoans to POLITICO, “What will it take if winning 72 seats isn’t enough for us to be kind of more prominent in the national conversation? There’s this other party who are nobody in parliamentary terms, but are eating our lunch.”
It’s not the first time the Lib Dems have tried to take the fight to Farage. They seized the mantle as Britain’s main pro-Europe party during the long, tortured Brexit years — only to sink to a disastrous result at the 2019 election. “The thing about Brexit was, for many people, it was not their main issue … but it came across that that was the one thing we cared about,” Davey reflects he sips slowly on his pint, a man who previously asked for a picture looking over. The Lib Dem leader says his experience of fighting Farage before shows him that “you have to listen to people, and you have to try to bring people together when other people try to divide them.”
POLITICO puts it to Davey that his strategy seems simply to be to let Farage tire himself out, while avoiding punchy media attacks on the right-winger. It’s a characterization Davey rejects. “We’re attacking them,” he says, “look at my TikTok feed.”
“We have got to remember all those voters and what their real lives are like, and if you remember what people’s real lives are like, that they’re struggling to pay the bills, that they’re struggling to look after loved ones, that they need to get a GP appointment,” he argues. “If you tell the truth about those things, you’re much more likely to succeed.”
“Farage has nothing to say on health, nothing to say on cost of living, nothing to say on all those issues that really people care about. I think he’ll come a cropper, so we’ll just stick to our guns.”
The Labour of love
The Lib Dems are still haunted by their brutal experience of coalition government. They entered office with the Conservatives in 2010, only to be unceremoniously cast aside by voters in a 2015 electoral bloodbath.
Since then, the Liberal Democrats have leaned into anti-Conservative messaging, with the party snatching 59 seats off the Tories in 2024 and taking direct aim at its leaders.
But, after the Tory rout of 2024, the Lib Dems have another problem: how best to challenge Labour, Britain’s governing party, which is more naturally aligned on the center-left with the Lib Dems.
The second MP who spoke to POLITICO said: “I think our best prospects are in Tory seats, but where last year, being the best-placed candidate to beat the sitting Tory was an extremely powerful thing, it’s now much less so.
“The focus over the last few years was so obsessively about beating the Tories and winning seats that we neglected some Labour areas where we might otherwise have thought we could do well. We’ve allowed some of that anti-Labour campaigning to atrophy.”
While the Lib Dems try to find their feet in opposing Labour, Davey has tried to make a running on an issue close to his heart — including at the government’s expense.
For the Lib Dem leader, it’s deeply personal. Once a young carer for his mother and grandmother, Davey is now a carer to his 17-year-old son John, who has learning and physical disabilities. His wife Emily has multiple sclerosis, and Davey is genuinely animated when discussing how to fix the system to better support carers.
“The establishment, whether that’s the broader Westminster bubble or the media, don’t want to talk about care,” Davey — speaking on the water — claims, describing it as a “conspiracy.” Like the Conservatives before them, Labour has punted a fix for Britain’s creaking adult social care system into the long grass with a commission.
“They’re not interested,” he argues. “They’d rather it go away. The fact is that governments and the Treasury want to kick it down the track again and again. As long as I have a voice, I’m not going to put up with that.”
“I’m certainly not the first person to make that point that, if [the government] really took care seriously, if you overcome the Treasury’s skepticism, the amount you’d save for the NHS would be just ginormous.”
Davey argues that better support for carers would let them do more work and thereby increase their contribution to the economy. He pitches it as “hard nosed economics” and not just the “right thing to do.”
The government announced in January that Louise Casey would conduct a major review into Adult Social Care — and Davey rows furiously as we talk about it.
“There must be some people who realize that the decision to give Louise Casey such a long time is a mistake, because if that timetable is stuck to, most long-term recommendations won’t come out until a year before the election, which is going to kill Labour [politically],” he says. “But I think the Treasury is very happy with the timetable. I think they probably dreamt it up in the Treasury to try to kill it again.”
The Treasury has long been an enemy for Davey, an economist by training. A former special adviser tells of the “regular, steely” arguments Davey had with Tory then-Chancellor George Osborne back when Davey was energy secretary in the Coalition.
There’s a political angle to it all, too. Davey thinks care could be the topic that clinches the next election for his party, such is the disillusionment among Brits about the state of play, with a strained care system heaping massive additional pressure on the already-creaking NHS.
“Health and social care will be a top issue at the next election, and people who think otherwise haven’t read their history books, they haven’t looked at election day, over the last 30, 40, 50 years,” he argues. “If you look across Parliament and outside, the Tories are nowhere, they’ve got no credibility. They don’t raise it … Reform is really not interested. So I think, on a massive issue that I think will be one of the top issues at the next election, we will be the only opposition party with any credibility.”
72 is a crowd
Generally speaking, the Lib Dems present a sunny face to the British public, although the party is not free from factional murmurings below the surface. While none of the MPs POLITICO spoke to suggest there are maneuvers to oust Davey, the first MP quoted said some in the parliamentary party “have concerns” about an inability to effect change.
They point to Christine Jardine’s letter to Davey after she was fired from the front bench, in which she says there is an “an internal process and communication challenge in making people feel that they are involved … definitely a disconnect between the leaders team and the people around him and MPs and the public on the ground.”
“No one wants to frustrate things for the sake of it,” the MP said. “I think people want change, and people are trying to effect change, and if no change is forthcoming, then I think people will look for different ways of effecting change.”
Speaking to POLITICO, former Lib Dem Leader Vince Cable says the “big challenge” in maintaining their increased voter base will lie in economic policy, “I think this cuts to the heart of the kind of difficulties we have as a party, and Ed Davey has personally,” he said.
“Because we were in the coalition government, we did make some enemies, a lot of Labour tactical voters were quite angry with us in 2015 and 17, but it did establish a reputation for constructive working in government and fiscal discipline. I think the one nation Tories” — a key part of the newer coalition of Lib Dem voters, Cable says – “will regard those as quite important qualifications.”
Cable adds: “I think maintaining a reputation for being liberal, for fighting a lot of the Reform messages, for being committed to some socially minded policies around social care in the NHS, that’s all very important. But I think it’s got to be combined with reminding people that, we have been responsible stewards, and many of our local government people and many of our MPs come through that route have been highly competent people running local councils. That’s probably what Farage is rather jealous of.”
When POLITICO asked whether Davey’s many stunts run counter to the importance of presenting the Lib Dems as sensible, responsible stewards, Cable denied it, saying a stint on the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing while Business Secretary “helped” his work in government.
Depending on how Davey choreographs the next four years — and if he is able to keep his MPs stepping in line with him — his party could increase its support and score another record-breaking win on MPs. Or, they could slip further down the public consciousness and have to fight even harder.
Not drawn on how he thinks the next election will go, Davey — pint glass nearly empty — told POLITICO: “I’ve seen some of my predecessors be rather obsessed about what happens after the next election, and I’ve seen that time and energy and lose focus on winning as many seats as we possibly can. And if we win as many as we possibly can the next election, we’ll have a very strong hand. We’ve already got the strongest third-party force for over 100 years. I can see us having an even stronger one after the next election, and if we do well, we’ll be very influential.”
It’s a big if.
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