This was a more sombre, more serious, Sir Ed Davey. The stunts – from falling off paddleboards to hurtling down rollercoasters – were scaled back at this year’s Liberal Democrat party conference. “This is the fight of our lives,” he repeatedly told his party. The focus, much like his conference speech last year, was on Reform UK.
But the announcement he’d held back for his speech was aimed at Conservative-leaning voters: tax cuts worth billions. And not just for lower income earners, but for those in the higher 40% rate of tax too. Part of the announcement – raising the amount you can earn before you pay income tax altogether – was the same policy Davey’s bête noire, Reform UK, announced at their conference a couple of weeks ago. The dividing line he drew was over how it was paid for.
Nigel Farage’s party would reduce spending on benefits to fund the tax cut. The Lib Dem leader said he would pay for it through the economic growth he believes could be gained by rejoining the EU’s Single Market and a customs union. Lib Dems vow to end ‘computer says no’ economy to boost growth Lib Dems call for one-to-one midwife care during childbirth Davey promises tax cuts for millions if UK rejoins EU single market By putting the European Union at the heart of how he would fund his tax cut, the Lib Dems couldn’t be drawing a starker contrast with the Brexit-backing Reform UK and a Conservative Party also committed to cutting welfare. But the plan is speculative.
The Lib Dems insist a deal with the EU could be negotiated within a year if the party was in government after the next election. Plenty of economic experts, including the official budget forecaster the OBR, believe the UK’s economy could grow if the UK was in the Single Market. But as recent political history teaches us, negotiating a deal with the European Union is often more difficult than party leaders hope. And basing a tax cut on potential future economic growth is a risky business.
There is also uncertainty over whether the Lib Dems’ sums add up. The independent think tank, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said the policy as set out in the press release would cost “much more” than the £17bn the Lib Dems have budgeted for. The party says the tax cut wouldn’t come in until the fifth year after the next election. So even if the party got into power and successfully negotiated an EU deal, the tax cut could be eight years away.
But the Lib Dem MPs I spoke to afterwards were less focused on these details than the message it sent to voters. Davey came into this conference facing criticism over his leadership from some MPs in private and others in his party in public worrying about the party’s ambition and direction. For now those concerns have been dampened. “That was the speech a lot of us have been waiting for him to give,” one Davey-sceptic MP told me afterwards.
A small number are uncomfortable with the main policy from the party’s conference being a tax cut that would most benefit the better off. One told me they would rather the focus had been wooing younger voters by tackling the amount graduates repay in student loans, an old bruise for the Lib Dems. But overall this speech, and this conference, was well received by the Lib Dem faithful. They are a party honing their messaging before the next general election.
The strategy is primarily on those 27 seats where the Lib Dems came second in 2024. Most of them are held by the Conservatives and Davey’s tax cuts are aimed at appealing to those voters. But already the attack from the Tories has been that the Lib Dems are “Labour’s lapdog”. That attack is in part because Davey has given his most explicit answer this week on not going into a coalition government with the Conservatives after the next general election.
He’s done the same for Reform UK. But he hasn’t ruled out a pact with Labour. So that attack from the Conservatives will come again and again before the next election. But the Lib Dems leave their Brighton conference buoyed, with sights not just on retaining their record 72 seats won at the last election, but on winning some more.
“I’ve got no ceiling on our ambitions,” Davey said this week. He has already served in government once, in coalition with David Cameron’s Conservatives. His eyes are on another stint in office.
