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