‘We offer the most ambitious change’: Ed Davey promises to push a Labor government into radical action

TThe Lib Dems will push a Labor government to adopt more radical policies on taxes, welfare and bringing Britain closer to the EU, Ed Davey has said, amid growing expectations that his party is on track for a much bigger role in the next parliament.

In an interview with the Observerthe Lib Dem leader said his party’s focus remained squarely on ousting Tory MPs in a tactical voting campaign that he claimed could be the most successful ever.

But with the Lib Dems rising in the polls and a cautious Labor party maintaining a double-digit lead, he said his party would use the next parliament to continue fighting for higher capital gains tax to pay for the NHS, a new mobility strategy for young people. deal with Europe and an end to the two child benefit limit – all of which Keir Starmer has rejected.

“We are a progressive, liberal party and we believe in investing in public services,” Davey said. “We believe in making taxes fairer, and we believe in truly transformative environmental action. I think people who want to see that level of change in our country can vote for the Liberal Democrats, knowing that in the next parliament we will have many Lib Dem MPs advocating for that.

“Honestly, if you want change, I think we offer the most ambitious change. I even have Labor people who say they are really Labor people, but they hope we get a lot of Liberal Democrat MPs in because they can hold the Labor Party to account.”

It comes with the latest Opinium poll for the Observer showing that the Lib Dems have increased their vote share to 12%, while Labor has fallen two points from 40% of the vote. Despite the informal partnership with Labor, which has seen the parties abandon seats where the other is the strongest challenger to the Tories, Davey said his party would push a Labor government for more radical action once it is in power.

“I have been against a Labor government before and have seen us win the debate many times,” he said. “That was great for a fairer society. Our manifesto is a program that we want to present in the next parliament. We will campaign for it, vote for it and develop it. If you win the argument, you can press the button.

“On issues like our relationship with Europe, the Liberal Democrats are passionately pro-European. It is a tragedy that we have seen the Conservatives poison relationships with our closest friends and allies. Are we going to campaign for a better trade deal with Europe? Yes. Are we going to campaign to ensure that young people can travel across Europe, with an agreement on youth mobility? Yes we are.”

According to some forecasts, the Lib Dems are on course to more than triple their current number of 15 MPs, helped in part by voters backing them to oust the Tory incumbent. The grimmest recent Tory projections even narrowly have the Lib Dems as the official opposition. However, Davey said it would be a “historic mistake” to underestimate the Conservatives, despite some high-profile mishaps during their campaign.

“I just think people who want real change have to be careful with the polls,” Davey said. “The Conservatives will not give up. They have more money than any other party. They’re going to spend the last few weeks on attack ads on social media. Get ready. I remember 2017 when everyone thought Theresa May was going to have a landslide. I thought she was going to have a landslide. I didn’t expect to be re-elected in 2017. The Liberal Democrats will certainly not take voters for granted.”

Other senior party figures are concerned that Tory warnings of a “supermajority” for Labor are precisely aimed at winning back exactly the kind of reluctant Tory voters the Lib Dems had been trying to win in the southern seats, as well as those in the south. -West. Davey said he believed his tactical voting argument had broken through.

“We are seeing tactical voting on a scale that I can never remember, even in 1997 and 2001,” he said. “We see it in the blue wall at home, we see it in the West Country. It was phenomenal. This really is an ABC election – everyone but the Conservatives. The fact that we’re the ones beating the Conservatives in so many seats, I’m very grateful for the people who are thinking about Labour, who are thinking about voting Green, (and) realizing that if they do that, they’re going to bring the Conservatives in to leave. It has a huge potential effect on the outcome.”

Davey has had a successful campaign, combining policy announcements with increasingly bizarre stunts. This weekend he will announce a plan to cut cancer waiting times through a major expansion of radiotherapy treatment – part of his party’s pledge that urgent patients should start cancer treatment within 62 days. It will be funded by a £9 billion overhaul of both capital gains tax and tax breaks for banks.

“I lost my dad to cancer and my mom to cancer, so it’s been a big part of my life,” Davey said. “We should certainly have the ambition to be among the best survivables in the world. We have some of the best scientists, it just needs to be prioritized.”