Ed Davey: we can offer better opposition than ‘Punch and Judy’ Tories

Ed Davey has said it is “frustrating and surprising” the government does not yet have a plan for the care sector, as he pledged that the Liberal Democrats could be a more effective opposition than a divided Conservative party.

Speaking to the Guardian before what will be a celebratory annual conference after the Lib Dems’ best election result in a century, Davey said he would maintain pressure on ministers over care, using the extra resources of his 72 MPs. He said the gathering in Brighton, beginning on Saturday, would be framed by “two emotions – we’re very excited and happy, obviously, but there’s a sense of responsibility too”.

He will head there with his position in the party significantly strengthened, and a sense of personal vindication after some Lib Dems doubted an election strategy based firmly on policies around the NHS and care. There were also internal worries about the stunts – from bungee jumping to Zumba dancing – Davey used to get attention for a party that entered the election with just 15 MPs, but it was another strategy that paid off.

“It was my eighth election standing for parliament,” Davey said, sitting in the kitchen of his family home in his south-west London constituency. “Genuinely, we spoke more about Liberal policy than I can ever remember, because we were capturing people’s attention.”

Much of this was based around talking about care, with Davey personalising the issue with a much-viewed election broadcast showing him at home looking after his son John, who is disabled.

Davey said he was disappointed that the Labour manifesto offered only vague policies for the sector, while even after this week’s report by Lord Darzi into the state of the NHS, few new policies had emerged.

“It was frustrating and surprising,” he said about the lack of election focus on care from other parties. “It’s so clear that if you want to reform the NHS, you’ve got to do social care. You’ve got to bring in family carers too, given that if you want to boost the economy you’ve got to be looking around everywhere for people who are able and willing to work.”

Lib Dem policies include paying care workers a minimum of £2-an-hour more than the “national living wage”, as well as professionalising training and accreditation for the sector. The party also wants more help for personal and family carers, including more flexibility over work, to stop people being harshly penalised for inadvertently breaching rules.

Davey said the Lib Dems would try to work constructively and cross-party, contrasting this with a bickering Conservative opposition he said “doesn’t seem to have learned any lessons” from the election loss. “One of the ways that we’re starting is being a better opposition, and part of that will be about tone,” he said. “They’re already getting into a Punch and Judy approach, and we think that actually people don’t like that. So we’ll be more constructive, more mature, putting forward alternatives.”

Amid the sober policy talk, the Brighton gathering will be undeniably jubilant, likely to include various parades and photocalls with the expanded Commons contingent, some of whom Davey freely admits he didn’t expect would win. “I went to bed on polling day, and I said to Emily [his wife]: ‘Look, we could have a really good night tonight, we might get 45 or 50 seats.’ That was the upper end of what I thought was possible.”

At one point in the interview, discussing the party’s increased influence, Davey says: “I mean 72 MPs – 72 MPs?” Asked if he can still hardly believe it himself, he replies: “It’s true. Guilty.”

When Davey took over, initially as interim leader, after a disastrous 2019 election in which the party crashed to a total of just 11 MPs – with its then leader, Jo Swinson, among those ejected from the Commons – he commissioned a review into the party’s woes and oversaw the drawing up of a new election strategy.

There were plenty of internal doubters. Soon after last year’s conference, a group of 30 senior party figures released a joint letter expressing their concern that Davey was being too cautious and was not properly explaining to voters what the Lib Dems stood for. Such voices are now quiet, and Davey is very open about the fact he aims to lead the party into the next election. “We’re already planning the new stunts,” he says.