The Liberal Democrats have won back the trust of voters after being in coalition with the Conservatives and U-turning on university tuition fees, Ed Davey has said. Speaking to the BBC’s Nick Robinson, who is interviewing all the main party leaders, Davey said one of the main aims of his time as leader had been to listen again to voters after three disappointing elections in a row. After forming part of the 2010-2015 coalition, with Davey holding posts including energy secretary, the Lib Dems slumped from 57 MPs to eight in the election that followed. In the 2017 and 2019 elections they took 12 and 11 seats. In this election, some polls suggest they could return to above 50.
Challenged by Robinson about why his party had agreed to the big government cuts under the Conservatives’ austerity programme, Davey said “there were tough decisions we made”. He said: “I had a choice, as did every Liberal Democrat minister – did I stay there or did I go? I think it could have been quite easy to go, and criticise the government from the media studios, and then potentially get re-elected, rather than losing my seat in 2015, as I and many other colleagues did. We rolled up our sleeves and tried to fight for the things we fought for.” Asked what he had achieved, Davey argued that cuts to social security were less severe than would otherwise have been the case, and cited the increase in renewable power. He argued: “I am not proud of every decision I had to take, but my point is if you wanted to change things, you had to roll up your sleeves and not quit.” Asked about the rise in university tuition fees, which the party had vehemently campaigned against in 2010, Davey said he had learned the lesson of “don’t promise something you can’t deliver”. He went on: “The second lesson was, we needed to rebuild trust, because as you say, people might say: ‘Well, why can we trust him?’ “We needed to really work on that. And when I became leader, in my acceptance speech I said we needed to wake up and smell the coffee, and we needed to talk to people in their communities, to find out what their problems were, and make sure we had answers for them.”