Leading the Way

People are fed up – and it’s easy to see why.

After years of Conservative chaos and neglect, so many things in our country are broken. The economy is in crisis, leaving families and pensioners struggling with sky-high energy bills, food prices and housing costs. The NHS is on its knees, with people waiting hours for an ambulance, weeks to see a GP or months for urgent cancer treatment. Water companies are getting away with pumping filthy sewage into our rivers and lakes and onto our beaches. The list goes on.

It feels like nothing is working the way it should.

Now Labour is letting people down badly by failing to deliver the change they promised. Their government so far has been littered with incompetence, timidity and bad decisions. One of their first actions was to take winter fuel payments away from millions of struggling pensioners, before being forced into a U-turn. They put up bus fares, announced an unfair family farm tax, and raised national insurance contributions – hitting small businesses, GPs, care homes and many other employers hard.

Meanwhile, Labour have not shown anywhere near the ambition and urgency this moment demands – to get our economy growing, bring down the cost of living, fix the NHS and other public services, or end the sewage scandal.

Given the failures of both Conservative and Labour governments, it’s little wonder that people’s faith in politics is at an all-time low. Many people just don’t believe that any government of any party can really make their lives better. And beyond our shores, they see a world rife with conflict and instability, making it even harder to see our domestic challenges being solved.

All this disillusionment is fuelling the rise of right-wing populists – not just Nigel Farage and Reform here in the United Kingdom, but also Donald Trump in the United States, the AfD in Germany, the RN in France, the FdI in Italy, the FPÖ in Austria, and many more across Europe and beyond.

We know how dangerous Reform’s brand of divisive, destructive politics is. From his hatred of the NHS to his love of Trump and Putin, Farage clearly does not share our fundamental British values.
With the Conservatives chasing Reform’s tail, and Labour sounding more and more like them every day, it falls to the Liberal Democrats to take them on. We are the only party with the courage and conviction to offer a compelling, positive alternative to the snake oil peddled by Farage and Reform.

All 72 Liberal Democrat MPs elected at the 2024 General Election, in Westminster Hall

In 2024, millions of people put their trust in us, many of them for the first time. By electing 72 Liberal Democrat MPs – the biggest liberal party in the House of Commons in over 100 years – voters handed us an exciting opportunity and a humbling responsibility.

To repay that trust, we are doing what we told people we would do: focusing on their priorities. Getting our economy back on track and getting the cost of living under control; ending the sewage scandal and protecting our precious environment; and above all, fixing the NHS and care crisis. That was the clear message of hope we campaigned on in the general election, and it is our clear mandate now.

We are providing the responsible opposition that any government needs – an essential role in our democracy, and one that today’s Conservative Party clearly cannot fulfil. They are simply too weak, too shambolic, and too out of touch with the lives of ordinary people.

We are taking a better, more constructive approach to opposition: telling ministers directly about the real problems people are facing and championing practical, hopeful solutions. We are holding Labour to account and challenging them to act faster and be much bolder, on everything from the NHS and care to Europe and political reform. As we do so, we won’t let the Conservative Party off the hook either, after all the chaos and misery they’ve caused.

The Liberal Democrats’ purpose in British politics, however, is much greater than just vanquishing what’s left of the Conservative Party and being the careful scrutineers of Labour’s actions – crucial though those jobs are. Our purpose is as it has always been, as it is spelt out in our party’s constitution: to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.

That goal may seem a long way off right now, but Britain has overcome big challenges before and we can do it again now. For more than 150 years, Liberals and Liberal Democrats have led the way: championing free trade, introducing the state pension and free school meals, laying the foundations of the welfare state and the NHS, legalising same-sex marriage, and taking urgent action to tackle climate change.

So now we must continue to lead the way, with big, bold policies to tackle the challenges facing our country in the years ahead. Not just clearing up the enormous mess left by the Conservatives, but building the fair, free and open society we all believe in. Doing what liberalism is all about: putting real power in people’s hands and holding the already powerful properly to account.

That is how we can deliver for our communities, turn back the tide of populism, and change people’s lives for the better. By showing people that their voices count, their votes matter, and liberal democracy can work for them.

Ed Davey
Leader of the Liberal Democrats and Chair of the Policy Review