As political showdowns go, this week’s gathering of Liberal Democrat MPs, billed by some as a crunch moment for Ed Davey, was a touch underwhelming. “I had expected a damp squib,” one attender put it. “It was damper than I thought.”
Far from generating a mass of opposition to Davey’s leadership, let alone a formal challenge to his position, the lengthy gathering in a Commons committee room on Tuesday evening brought a few minor grumbles, but little else.
“My main feeling was a sort of irritation that we were forced to sit through this very long meeting, one where in the main we all aggressively agreed with each other,” another MP put it.
This is not, however, the entire story. There is disquiet with Davey’s patient and sometimes cautious leadership style, as shown most dramatically by the sudden resignation a week ago of Charlie Maynard, the number two in the party’s Treasury team, over concerns the Lib Dems were failing to cut through with voters.
If Maynard hoped to spark a wider revolt, it did not happen. “It felt like he was trying to light the touchpaper, but it fizzled out instead of exploding,” one MP said. Another was more blunt: “Charlie really has fucked it up. He has zero political nous.”
The situation nonetheless remains tricky. Davey led the Lib Dems to a century-best performance in the ۲۰۲۴ election, winning ۷۲ MPs, and is safe for the foreseeable future. That said, frustrations that were already bubbling up before September’s party conference have arguably become more acute since.
This is largely the result of the two policy decisions set out by Davey at the conference: a promise of £۱۷bn in income tax cuts if the party is elected, and support for the pensions triple lock, just as Andy Burnham pledged to change it.
Both chimed explicitly with Lib Dem efforts to build momentum in the so-called blue wall of affluent home counties constituencies where the party made big gains from the Conservatives in ۲۰۲۴.
While just about every Lib Dem MP agrees that protecting these seats and potentially winning more is vital, some worry that Davey is being so careful to not alienate former Tory voters that any distinctively liberal message has been lost.
“Making us the party of tax cuts just jarred with activists,” one MP said. “It’s not that we don’t want taxes cut, it’s just that the overt positioning felt incredibly blue wall-y. It’s like we are aping the Conservatives, while they are aping Reform.”
They added: “There are levels of nuance here. Ed will be given time to make changes. But there are a lot of unhappy people in the party at the moment, and not just MPs.
“Charlie Maynard didn’t help. Now we have to rally around the leader, do all the Operation Big Dog stuff, and we haven’t addressed the issues about who we actually are.”
Supporters of Davey argue that he is listening, but also point to the lessons of the ۲۰۱۹ election, when the party had a very clear national message – stop Brexit – but won just ۱۲ seats, with a vote total higher than ۲۰۲۴’s but spread too thinly.
“Ed was very clear in the meeting that he understands people’s frustrations,” an MP said. “There are some legitimate grievances. But he has enormous credit built up, and people are prepared to give him the time he needs to make the changes he needs to make.”
Thus far, public opposition has come from only a handful of people, also including another MP, Tom Gordon, who called Davey’s argument that the triple lock needed to be saved to protect the pensions of people currently in their ۴۰s “downright insulting”.
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Some MPs are privately unimpressed by what they view as performative complaints from, as one put it, a “small minority who feel the world fails to recognise their staggering genius”. Another said: “The plea, particularly among colleagues with small majorities, is: please think when you do these things, as it undermines us.”
Another factor protecting Davey is the absence of a plan for what would come next. There are ambitious and capable MPs in the ۲۰۲۴ intake, but they lack experience. If Davey was ousted, a leading contender would be Daisy Cooper, his deputy and Treasury spokesperson – who some Lib Dems feel shares the same cautious approach.
One MP said: “A lot of people are terrified of a Daisy leadership – it’s the main reason why Ed is still in place. It is politely phrased as a ‘lack of a viable alternative’.”
For now, it seems, the party will maintain its own version of Labour’s “Ming vase” tactic – trying to remain sufficiently benign and unobjectionable to hoover up enough tactical votes to gain more MPs, and then perhaps support a Labour government on the condition it introduces the Lib Dem holy grail of a proportional election system.
“That’s the big pla: win the seats to deliver PR and then we can be liberals,” one MP said. “But that relies on a lot of things going right.”
There is worry, and some disagreement. But as yet, no real rancour. “Some of this is just the usual mid-parliament blues, which the ۲۰۲۴ intake have never experienced,” one senior party figure said.
“We are still small enough that we can have individual conversations to sort things out. And we don’t do drama. So there will be no implosion. Just some soul searching.”
