On 27th August, Thursday, Sir Ed Davey emerged as the unrivalled leader of the Liberal Democrats defeating his counterpart Layla Moran by a wider-than-expected margin of 42,756 votes to 24,564.
Liberal Democrats has elected their fourth leader in the form of Sir Davey in the last five years. Davey had been acting leader since last December following the resignation of Jo Swinson after the party’s decimation in the 2019 General Parliamentary elections. The Lib Dems have just 11 MPs, and recent opinion polls have put them on 5-10% of the vote with Davey’s task cut out for himself in rebuilding electoral support and erasing the existing divisions within the Party. Commenting on the Rule Britannia controversy around dividing the country along cultural lines, in his statement to The Independent he said,
“They want to divide and rule. I’m not going to play their silly games. I’m going to have a laser beam-like focus on the real concerns of the British people.”
The MP for Kingston and Surbiton, was a cabinet minister in the 2010-2015 coalition government wherein Davey was energy and climate change secretary in the coalition government. He had the opportunity of travelling to India after Prime Minister Modi had just assumed office in 2014. Campaigning for decarbonising the climate with a heavy focus on solar energy, Sir Davey had then held constructive discussions with Indian PM around consumption of renewable resources, harnessing solar energy and “Namami Gange"- India's drive to clean river Ganges. Speaking about his learnings from PM Modi in an interview with Asian Voice last year, Sir Davey had said,
“The main learning that I had from Modi's climate change policy was his focus on consumption of solar, greener and cleaner energy. And as a former Chief Minister of Gujarat he had attracted heavy investment into the state owing to the establishment of a more secure energy supply system.
Inspired by Prime Minister Modi's rural electrification programme and the micro-solar sights, he had himself formulated a new economic plan with the aim of “decarbonising capitalism” to “radically reduce the UK's reliance on fossil fuels”. His role will be crucial in being a watchdog to Alok Sharma and his team as the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 26) to the UNFCCC was originally scheduled to take place from 1-12th November 2021, in Glasgow, UK.
But most importantly Sir Davey will be tasked to revive the Party at a time when the two-party system in the UK has once again been strengthened following the election of Sir Keir Starmer as Labour’s new leader. Sir Starmer is already ahead in the electoral race according to the recent YouGov polls which highlighted that he is a more preferred leader among Britons in comparison to Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
