Sir Ed Davey dismisses claim that his party is ‘sleepwalking into irrelevance’

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has dismissed a claim from one of his own council leaders that the party is “sleepwalking into irrelevance”.

Responding to the comments from Julian Brazil, the leader of Devon County Council, Sir Ed told GB News: “Well, when the party has grown as fast and as well as it has in recent years, with our record number of MPs and our huge number of councillors, you’re not going to please everyone all the time.

“It’s interesting those comments. It’s from the Devon councillor. We’ve now got more MPs in Devon than we’ve had since the 1920s. We’re running more councils than we have for many, many years, with lots of councillors.

“I could take you across the country, to show that Liberal Democrat success. We’re going to keep doing that.

“The strategy we’ve got is actually very popular amongst the vast majority of conference delegates, and we’re making our points about how we’re going to help people with the cost of living. We’re going to cut their taxes.

“Yesterday we announced that we’re going to cut 10p of the duty on petrol and diesel. People paying a fortune at the pumps, thanks to Trump’s idiotic war in Iran, and we need to help people.

“The government gets lots of money in from higher oil and gas prices. It needs to give that back to people who are struggling when they’re filling up their cars.”

He also hit out at Trump when questioned about Canada’s new partnership agreement with the EU: “We’re arguing here that we need to join the customs union, that we need to join the single market to take down those trade barriers that were imposed by the Conservatives, supported by Nigel Farage.

“It’s been a disaster for our economy, and I strongly support the idea of Canada working with Europe. As I said, we want a pact with Europe which helps our economy and helps our defence and security.

“There’s a really big reason for that. It’s called Donald Trump. He’s hurting our economy with his war in Iran and with his trade tariffs, quite outrageous the way he’s behaved to our great country. And then he’s undermined NATO. He’s undermined our defence.

“The only way to respond to that is to make sure you have international alliances, economic alliances, defence alliances with other countries. Clearly, Europe is the obvious place. It’s on our continent.

“But bringing in other countries, whether they’re Commonwealth countries like Canada and Australia, whether they’re allies in the Far East, we have to build those alliances when we have someone in the White House who cannot be trusted and who’s an unreliable ally to our country.”