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4 days ago
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There he was, falling off a paddleboard, then zooming down a waterslide in a yellow rubber ring. He bungee-jumped, tried surfing, spent a day at a theme park, splashed around to Taylor Swift songs at aqua-aerobics and had a makeover on the TV show This Morning. Hooting with joy, usually with centrist dad bod wrestled into tight wetsuit, Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, became the politician wringing the most fun out of last summer’s general election. It shouldn’t have worked. At the previous election, the Lib Dems won just 11 seats, which put them on the critically endangered list (they added another four in byelections). Now, Davey is one of 72 Lib Dem MPs, the party’s biggest success in modern history, and a number that surprised even him.
Davey became famous as the man who did all his own stunts – the Tom Cruise, if you like, of British politics – but he stresses, when we speak over Zoom, that it was the quality and campaigning of the local candidates that should be credited with the party turnaround.
Yes, yes – but which was his favourite activity? “I really liked the slip’n’slide in Somerset. And bizarrely enough, I quite enjoyed the bungee jumping in the end. We just enjoyed the campaign, and it was great for meeting people.” The stunts attracted crowds, he says, “and you’re engaging them. You do some real politics, actually, as a result. I like to think, in terms of the leaders, I probably met more people, shook more hands.” And his least favourite? Hurtling down a hill on a bike felt a little too risky, he says.
At the autumn’s party conference, Davey joked that “health and safety” had prevented him from “putting my hand up a cow’s behind”. Was that a genuine idea? “Apparently,” he says. Were there ones he vetoed? “No, I had a choice in the bungee jumping. It was either skydiving, wing-walking or bungee jumping, and so I thought I’d save some up for next time.”
You can trace last year’s stunt overload to 2021, to the Chesham and Amersham byelection, when the Liberal Democrats took the Tory-held seat and Davey ceremoniously smashed a wall made from blue cardboard boxes with a hammer. “We found we were able to communicate a political message, get lots of coverage, and make people smile a bit, which is really important in politics, I think – we forget it on what you might call the progressive side of politics.”
The right, he says, has been good at it, “the ones doing the jolly japes and pulling the pints, and whatever. You saw it with Boris Johnson. He had nothing to say but his visuals were very powerful, and people liked that he was a bit of fun. Now I can absolutely guarantee I would never model myself on that man, but if your opponents are doing things that are effective, you need to think about them.”
Davey was criticised during the campaign, however, and accused of trivialising politics. “I think even people who had that view to start off with changed their view.” The stunts got attention, but it was vital, he says, that there was always a serious point beneath the silliness, such as highlighting sewage and wider environmental issues with his water-based activities, or children’s mental health with the slip’n’slide. The bungee jump was to encourage people to take the leap for the Lib Dems, but it was also, “with a wry smile to ourselves,” he says, where they launched their policy on supporting bereaved people – given the potential risk of the extreme sports, presumably. “I think we got more attention for our policies than we’ve got before, because we did the stunts. Now, maybe that’s not how it should be, but that’s what happened.”
It wasn’t all about the stunts, Davey points out – he was widely praised for his very personal party election broadcast in which he was shown caring for his teenage son, John, who is disabled, and talking about being a carer as a child for his mother. “People would be saying: ‘Oh, this guy’s doing this silly stuff,’ and then they went: ‘Oh, right, this guy has a backstory but more importantly, he’s relating it to a massive need in the population.’”
Now that the Lib Dems are the third biggest party again, Davey is committed to putting pressure on the government to sort out health and social care. “For me, next year [2025] is a critical moment because if we don’t really start deciding the policies and implementing them, be it social carers or family carers, the danger is we’re going to get too near to the next general election – then they’ll forget and there’ll be another decade of failure on social care, which will be disastrous.” The Lib Dems are calling for a larger, more professionalised and better-paid workforce, and much more funding, especially to support family carers who inevitably slide into poverty, with women – who do the most caring – bearing the brunt.
In May, Davey and his party have their sights set on winning councils in Tory heartlands. “I’ve fought the Tories all my life,” he says. “If I look to next year, finishing the job with the Tories is really important.” With a Trump presidency looming, he also wants to push for stronger security and trade ties with Europe.
But first, the really important stuff: Davey wants to master TikTok. His young team is already advising him, with mixed, if endearing results. “When I said I’m leader of the Rizz Dems, I didn’t quite know what I meant. You know, give it main character energy.” He laughs. “If you can attract [younger people] to your channel, then they can look at the other stuff, and you can land more serious messages as well.” Social media, he says, should not be the place where rightwing politicians thrive, along with “people who are trying to divide us, the Andrew Tates of this world. It’s absolutely wrong for progressive voices to vacate that space and leave a vacuum for the right.”
What has all this done for Davey personally? He has the highest profile of any Lib Dem leader in a long time. Has his embarrassment threshold been obliterated, though? “I think it must have been. So much for dignity,” he says with a laugh. “The key thing is, and I want to stress this, if you don’t have values and substance behind it, then I don’t think you should do this stuff, because politics is a serious game.” It’s time for Davey to go – to prepare either a prime minister’s question, or perhaps a new TikTok dance.
