Ed Davey has given his first major newspaper interview of the campaign to Eleni Courea at the Guardian.
He again rules out coalition with the Conservatives, but would not be drawn on possible deals with Labour:
“I’m not talking about anything beyond what I’ve just said on the Tories for the simple reason that I want to campaign on Liberal Democrat policies … I think it was right that we’ve made it very clear that the Conservatives are anathema to us. I’ve fought the Tories all my life, I fight them every day.” On which high-profile Conservatives he would like to see his party defeat, Davey named three: the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt; the education secretary, Gillian Keegan; and the justice secretary, Alex Chalk.
Davey refused to set his conditions for propping up a Labour government in the event of a hung parliament, whether in a coalition or looser confidence-and-supply arrangement, though he said electoral reform had always been a Lib Dem priority. He said he had not spoken privately to Starmer since before the campaign began.
“I sat next to him during the king’s coronation,” he said. “We compared notes – and we talked about football as well. As you know he’s an Arsenal fan, I’m a Notts County fan … I think he probably knows more about football than I do, let me be very, very honest. I’ve always followed football but he plays it.”
Some question what differentiates Davey from Starmer. When asked this, he finds it easier to detail things they have in common. “There are things in his life which he had to struggle with and I’ve had quite a few in mine. There are actually more similarities in terms of our upbringing. We’ve had challenges to face,” he said.
All very interesting, though the opinion polls make it look overwhelmingly likely that Labour will win an overall majority this time.
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