Surprising toxicity, stunted ambitions

Four days of earnest, well-meaning discussion, sadly trending towards catatonia (not the band.) If you want to know what the climate implications of angora rabbit farming could be, the LibDem conference is where you want to be. The LibDems have a LOT of policy – and almost the full range of reactions to them were on display in Brighton.

The whole conference led up to Sir Ed’s Tuesday afternoon speech in which he announced that if the LibDems formed the next government they would raise the annual tax-free personal allowance to £15,000 (it is currently £12,570) and the 40% tax threshold from £50,270 to £56,000. This sounds very expensive.

The commitment to increase the personal allowance, strangely, matched Reform’s conference announcement two weeks ago. This competitivity was made stranger by the accompanying war of LibDem words that Ed Davey rained down on Reform, including his startling attempt to link recent protests in Dover and Portsmouth by what he called “thugs in black shirts and balaclavas.” Through them, Sir Ed overstretched to make a link to fascism in 1930s Britain. While complaining about the current toxicity of British politics. Mote, meet plank.

Sir Ed had a personable sit-down Q&A with Caroline Quinn on Sunday afternoon in which he completed no stunts, jumped out of no passing aeroplanes and made optimistic assessments of the LibDems place in the political world. His basic line is that the LibDems are one of the last remaining bulwarks of civilisation and, specifically, a “firewall against Farage.”

One could not help but think about the comments from the very pleasant LibDem Leader of Devon County Council, Julian Brazil (Harry Farley, BBC News, 20^th September 2026 “Lib Dems sleepwalking to irrelevance under Davey”) that Sir Ed was asked about during the Q&A (he basically said that the LibDems were doing a good job in Devon, without engaging with the underlying point.)

However, More in Common Pollster Luke Tryl confirmed many attendees fears when he reported that the LibDem message was not “cutting through” nationally and that if Labour need some additional seats to shore up a majority after the next election Sir Ed could be in a Cleggian position to be deputy prime minister, but that the immediate election threat was the very real possibility of the Conservatives mounting an effective “vote LibDem: get Labour” campaign. (Useful conference prep from Luke Tryl and More in Common available on The Opinion Brief podcast for those interested, but also available elsewhere for those not apple users…)

Daisy Cooper the LibDems Treasury spokesman, all in white, explained a plan to replace the Treasury with a new “Department for Growth” and separating spending controls in to a Department for Public Expenditure.

OK… but no clear suggestion of what the Department for Growth would do differently other than, confusingly, recategorizing a lot of public spending as investment. Not in a bridges and optical fibre way. Moving spending out from government control? Not so much. Also, joining the EU Single Market although not really confronting what the bill from the EU would be, which takes you straight back to the four freedoms: goods, services, capital, and people. Oh and regulatory harmonisation. This would be a tricky sell.

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Conclusion? Sir Ed hopes to emulate Nick Clegg. (The very opposite of what he tried so earnestly to achieve.) A number of Sir Ed’s colleagues do not regard this as an ambition that sets the LibDems apart sufficiently. Ho-hum.