Observing the Lib Dem conference from afar this week, I have realised that I’ve got two distinct issues in my head mixed up.
The first issue is whether the Lib Dems should tack to the right in order to retain the bumper crop of former Conservative rural and extremely wealthy constituencies that it gained in the 2024 general election. It’s a trend I’m not a fan of, both as someone who has come to loathe centrism as a strategy and someone who is far to the left of that, but I can’t really make the claim that it definitely won’t work for them, at least in the short term. Nor can I argue that the Conservative shift to the right over the past decade hasn’t left an awful lot of voters in the country effectively unrepresented. As a democrat, I may not share their views but I don’t deny that they deserve representation (if only I believed the feeling was mutual).
The other issue is whether Ed Davey is fit to lead, and that he’s the right person to lead the party through that shift. It’s really this issue I want to focus on here.
Immediately after the local elections I wrote that I thought the time had come for Davey to stand down and that if he was unwilling, the party ought to push the issue. Manifestly that has not happened. At the same time, I’ve heard various rumours of the parliamentary party increasingly standing up to him and forcing the party to shift emphasis. I was hopeful that we’d see the fruits of that at the Lib Dem conference in Brighton this week.
It has certainly not been apparent to me over the conference period that such an emphasis has occurred. His recent interview with PoliticsHome very much gives the impression that we are to see more of the same.
I can’t decide whether to sum up the strategy motion that the party conference passed this week as an everything bagel or a nothing burger. It’s an everything burger because it covers absolutely every aspect of party strategy, very little of which I could have much objection to. However, also like a bagel, it has one very big hole in the middle in that it has absolutely nothing to say about what the new Lib Dem vision to be pitched to the public is going to be; that will be for Ed Davey to determine. An interminably long strategy motion which covers every single possible priority, unattached to money and specifics on policy or messaging could equally be called a nothing burger; I’m sure it felt very tasty passing it in the hall, but it lacks any meaningful substance and is unlikely to sate anyone. Even the constant recourse to “Liberalism” (capital L, I note) is meaningless if you are not careful to define what you mean by Liberalism. The party’s recent history would suggest that it can’t decide on that either, and prefers to simply skip over that issue.
As Federal President Josh Babarinde has been keen to emphasise, this document is merely a “party strategy” (albeit a deplorably unfocused one), as distinct from the “political strategy” which “rightly sits with the party leader”. In other words, it’s a blank cheque for Davey to do what he wants.
So at least that’s settled. There was an opportunity to shift gear, but the party has emphatically chosen not to; arguably the cost to do so further down the road before the next general election will outweigh any benefit. So we must turn to how it is working out.
I’ve read Ed Davey’s speech to conference. The main message I got from it was: Emily Gasson is great and it’s a shame she isn’t leading the party.
To be clear, I didn’t hate it. Davey has taken an admirably stronger position against Reform, Restore and the rising tide of British fascism compared to Badenoch and Burnham. Much of what he describes as Liberalism is stuff that I strongly endorse. While I might not share Davey’s vision of a low tax economy, I applaud that — at least in this speech and his behaviour this week — his brand of centrism doesn’t extend to sacrificing minority groups in the name of triangulation (I note that his earlier support for trans rights was missing from his leader’s speech, which given previous concerns about his commitment to that issue was mildly disappointing).
But the low tax stuff. Boy. First of all there’s that commitment to raising personal tax thresholds, something I have sympathy for (particularly personal allowance), even if I question that it is the right priority. But how will it be paid for? By rejoining the EU? That is a decade-long process of fraught negotiations at best; even rejoining the single market will take years and require the EU’s goodwill. Are the Lib Dems really basing their tax policy on where the EU will be in three years time? It may have escaped Davey’s attention but that’s currently looking pretty fraught. I’m all for rejoining, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.
I’m sure that many Lib Dems will object to this by pointing out that the party’s growth agenda goes far wider than merely rejoining the EU, and will point out the “Liberal Democrats mean business” motion passed this week to that effect. I have two main comments regarding that. Firstly, the motion refers to Labour’s “unfair jobs tax and damaging business rates hikes”, but spending all these growth proceeds on income tax thresholds will make it harder for a Lib Dem government to reverse those tax hikes. Secondly, I remain highly sceptical of this proposal for a Department of Growth, or DoG (I know they prefer to call it the Department for Growth, but let’s be realistic for one second: it’s going to be known as DoG).
I don’t think you are going to radically change the culture within the civil service, which is frequently cited as the reason why the Treasury is so bad at both taxation and allocating departmental budgets, simply by hiving those same civil servants into two different departments (Ian Dunt’s How Westminster Works… and Why It Doesn’t does a good job at summarising the scale of that problem). The motion doesn’t directly refer to that hoary cliche of a “bonfire of the red tape” but it’s implied: at best this will end in the same way that Jacob Rees-Mogg’s BOGE; at worst it will end up more like Elon Musk’s DOGE (and all those stupid Reform attempts to duplicate it in local government) and cause real damage. It’s all very well paying lip service to environmental and consumer protection, but if you are going to call it the Department of Growth, you can’t really be surprised if it prioritises, well, growth. Aficionados of GDP could do well to remember Goodhart’s Law at the best of times; does anyone really think that some woolly sounding words about preventing enshittification and stopping shitting in rivers is going to bother a civil servant tasked with squeezing out an additional 0.1% from the economy if they are told that should be their primary focus? Remember Grenfell; a tragedy caused in part by a previous dash for growth and the Lib Dems’ deafening silence in coalition.
If the Lib Dems are serious about reforming how Whitehall conducts itself, conflating it with simply going for growth is not it. And if growth is your primary goal, raising tax thresholds is almost certainly not the way to do it, according to tax expert Dan Neidle.
Assuming this policy is aimed at voters in wealthy Lib Dem held and target seats, is such an unfunded tax cut going really impress them? Or will it, as Stephen Bush suggests, merely result in people dismissing the party as being “unserious”?
Bizarrely however, this wasn’t even the worst unfunded tax cut that Ed Davey pledged this week. He also pledged to cut fuel duty by 10p a litre — and again claimed that it would be self financing because of extra growth. Never mind that there will be nothing to stop fuel companies from simply pocketing the reduction in tax by not reducing petrol at the same rate (with some justification due to the fluctuating price of crude at the moment). Never mind that this growth will come directly at the expense of the environment. Never mind that a “temporary” cut like this will, inevitably, become permanent (fuel duty has already been frozen since 2011, and was cut in 2022 — which you may not have noticed for the reasons outlined above).
So, to summarise, this has been the week of Ed Davey Triumphant. He has been told by his conference that he is free to set the party’s political strategy and has responded by framing the Lib Dems as the party of unfunded, environmentally irresponsible tax cuts which will have minimal impact on the economy but will mostly be enjoyed by the wealthiest. Again; I’m not saying that the party should skew back to left — I consider that fight to be lost. But I do question that this DoG’s dinner is even going to be an effective message to send to the richer and more conservative voters that the Lib Dems are supposedly laser focused on now. In my experience those sorts of voters value fiscal responsibility and political seriousness, and this has not been a serious week for the Lib Dems. You don’t have to be some leftist atavism from an earlier political age like me for this to be concerning.
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