LIBERAL democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has said his party is a serious force in politics and recent elections show it can take on and beat Labour, the Tories, the Green Party, and Reform UK.
He told Katherine Forster on GB News: “We’re a very serious party, and we’re very successful. We had our best result in 100 years at the last general election. Last May, in the local elections, we beat the Conservatives and Labour for the first time ever.
“And if you look at the council by-elections across the whole country last year, which party won the most? It was the Liberal Democrats. We were the only party to beat Reform, and in fact, we had more council by-election victories than Labour, Conservative and Green put together.
“So I’m about winning. I think we really have to show that we’re winning, and we are.”
On the Iran war, he said: “I’m really worried that there are parties in Parliament who’ve backed Donald Trump’s illegal war. Kemi Badenoch, cheerleaders from the Conservatives, cheerleader for Donald Trump, so did Nigel Farage and Reform, and that war is putting up people’s bills, their petrol prices at the pumps, their energy bills, mortgage costs have soared because of this damaging legal war, and we had to be clear as a country that we oppose it.
“The Liberal Democrats, as you know, have been the party opposing Donald Trump, and we’ve opposed this legal war. The sooner it ends, the better for people.”
He added: “We certainly think there should be extra support for people who are suffering the most, who really can’t afford it, but there’s lots of ordinary families out there who are on low middle incomes, for whom the £500 rise in energy bills on top of rising mortgage costs, on top of the cost of living crisis really, on top of the petrol price rises, are going to really struggle, and that will hit our economy.
“So we’ve got to make sure that we are thinking about lots of people who are suffering.”
Sir Ed said it was a fallacy to believe that more drilling in the North Sea would reduce energy prices: “Well, I’m
concerned about the Conservative position. They’re trying to kid people that this will reduce petrol prices and oil prices, it won’t…but they’re trying to say that, and these are people who backed Donald Trump, who’s the cause of these price rises.
“I’m not taking lessons from the Conservatives who messed up so badly on energy policy. I’m not convinced that Ed Miliband’s got everything right. We do need to invest in renewables. That’s the cheapest, most secure form of electricity.
“You don’t have to import any of that at all. It’s our winter, and our own sun, but we’ve got to make sure that we’re working with European allies on this, people like Norway, very close allies who we can work with on oil and gas.”
He said the government should move to proscribe the IRGC following the Golders Green arson attack: “I was horrified. This terrorist attack really will undermine people’s confidence, and the government’s right to move fast.
“We need to stand by the Jewish community in North London, and across the country we’ve seen some horrific events. We think of what happened in the synagogue in Manchester, and so we need to stand by our Jewish community, and we need to be very strong against any Iranian operatives here.
“It’s the Liberal Democrats who have championed the idea of prescribing the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, here in the UK. We said that to the last Conservative government, they didn’t listen. We’ve said it to Labour. They didn’t listen. I hope they will now listen and listen to the Liberal Democrats who say we should proscribe these Iranian terrorists.”
