Ed Davey should go further

 One can count on ones fingers the number of  Westminster party leaders who were born or brought up in difficult circumstances: David Lloyd George, Ramsay MacDonald, James Callaghan and possibly John Major come to mind. (All twentieth century, one notes. Labour/TU sponsorship began in the 1870s and MPs were not paid until 1911. Until then, MPs needed independent income to sustain their political careers.)  Surely none could have received more body blows in life than Ed Davey and his wife Emily, as the article referred to in the local party's blog lays out in detail. To have reached a seat at the cabinet table after all that is a tribute to Ed's fortitude.

There were some achievements in the face of Conservative opposition, too. He and Vince Cable stopped the programme of closure of post offices, begun by John Major and continued under Blair and Brown. He allowed newcomers to break into the charmed circle of big energy companies, though he was not to know how poor regulation would allow several in with poor economic structures which were bound to fail.

However, I would contend that he (and fellow Liberal Democrat ministers) could have done more to prevent the 2011 reversal of much that the coalition had achieved in its first year, even to the extent of threatening to pull out of the coalition (the terms of which the Conservative Health minister had already broken). How Osborne and company persuaded Nick Clegg that his party would lose more seats in an immediate general election than if they saw out the full term is a mystery. Further, for all Clegg's undoubted charm, there should have come a point when fellow-ministers should have ceased following him like sheep. The party on the back benches had already seen the feet of clay and would surely have backed a rebellion.

That Guardian article is headed with an apology. "We didn’t show we cared enough. We won’t make that mistake twice". I believe he should go further, and admit that he got it wrong over a whole slew of policies from selling Royal Mail on the cheap, through failing to maintain PPE in the NHS to signing away nuclear power generation to the French and Chinese. For someone who used to campaign against nuclear power, that was some U-turn. He should come clean over these things now, because otherwise they will come back with more force during next year's general election campaign. 

Nor is a simple "I hate Tories" message right for the time, though it may be effective come the election. In this period between the English local elections and the general, we should be emphasising our unique brand, as in Zoe Williams' final quote from Ed  “I believe in our environmental stuff, I believe in our political reform, I believe in our internationalism, I believe in civil liberties, I believe in our support for public services, I believe we’re caring," - and a return to at least a European free trade area, I would add.