The contest to become the next leader of the Liberal Democrats is turning into a two-horse race, as Ed Davey and Jo Swinson battle it out to lead the revitalised party.
As the number of declared Tory leadership candidates passes double figures, the Lib Dems are also looking to the future as the party hopes to build on its best local and European election results ever.
“Only a few months ago some Liberal Democrats thought it would be about how to cleanse the taint of coalition, which is why some were hoping that the likes of Layla Moran might be persuaded to run, as both Swinson and Davey served in the coalition government,” writes the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush.
“That the party recorded its best local elections and its best European elections in history in the same month means that is not going to be seen as a pressing question anymore,” he says.
Neither is there a question about how to respond to the threat of rival centre grouping Change UK following their abysmal showing in the European parliamentary elections. However, The Guardian says, “the leadership contenders are likely to face intense questioning from party members who saw botched attempts to form pacts with other remain parties such as Change UK and the Greens fail”.
“The big opportunity for the two candidates is to set out what question the contest is about: and why they, not their opponent, are the answer” says Bush.
So who are the candidates jostling to replace Vince Cable as leader and what are their chances?
Sir Ed Davey
The first candidate to declare his intention to stand for the leadership, Ed Davey is MP for Kingston and Surbiton, in south-west London, and served in the coalition as secretary of state for energy and climate change.
Laying out his plans on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Davey pledged to head up the “fight to stop Brexit” but also said the country needed “a new economic model”.
The Guardian says he “intends to draw on his former climate brief to give the Lib Dems another key policy to champion”.
“I’m talking about de-carbonising capitalism, making capitalism turn green so Britain is a world green finance capital. That means being tough on our banks, on the stock exchange, on the pension funds, so they take account of climate risk” he said.
He has ruled out any future formal coalitions with the Conservatives or Labour in their current forms, because of the Tory position on delivering Brexit and because it would be “deeply unattractive” for the Lib Dems to enter a formal coalition with Jeremy Corbyn.
Rather than forming formal pacts with other parties, he has instead urged moderate MPs to defect. He will also have won plaudits from members after promising to target Tory leadership hopefuls who failed to reflect their constituents’ concerns about a no-deal Brexit, reports The Independent.
Jo Swinson
Long seen as a future Lib Dem leader, Swinson passed up the chance to challenge Vince Cable following the 2017 general election, instead serving as his deputy for the past two years.
Swinson was first elected in 2005 as the MP for East Dunbartonshire. She was defeated by the SNP’s John Nicolson in 2015 but regained the seat during the 2017 snap election with a majority of 5,339 votes.
When Swinson was first elected she was the Baby of the House (youngest member of the House of Commons), aged just 25, and the first ever MP to have been born in the 1980s.
She formally announced her candidacy last night, and according to iNews “is considered to be a frontrunner to replace Sir Vince”.
The Daily Telegraph says Swinson will be setting out her leadership plans this week but Ladbrokes already has her at 1/4 while her main rival is 4/1 to lead the party.
An assured media performer, the New European says “she leans to the right of the party, preferring ‘nudge’ methods on equalities and a light touch on business regulation”.
“Swinson has been unafraid to take stances that wouldn’t necessarily play well to her natural crowd, such as the time she argued for a statue of Margaret Thatcher on the grounds of celebrating the first female prime minister, or her votes against reducing university tuition fees” says the paper. “As a junior equalities minister in the coalition, and as chair of the Lib Dem campaign for gender balance, her feminism is outspoken and pragmatic”.
While both Swinson and Davey hail from the right of the party, a major contrast between the two looks set to be their attitude to the Lib Dems’ time in coalition.
Swinson has previously said the party must “own the failures” of their time in government, citing some deep cuts to public services, the introduction of the hostile environment and the bedroom tax.
Davey, on the other hand, said he will “never say the coalition was a bad thing” and that the Lib Dems’ difficult reputation in coalition had only been down to their PR.
“We played the politics wrong, but we did look after the people who needed looking after and we stopped the Tories cutting far deeper and more dramatically,” he said. “We got the blame for the bad things and no credit for the good things.”
Nominations remain open until 7 June, with the announcement of a new leader set for 23 July.
