How The Liberal Democrats Are Learning To Fight Keir Starmer

During the general election campaign last year, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey pitched his party as the “Tory removal service”. It was a brutally effective metaphor.

The Lib Dem electoral machine turfed out Tory after Tory in former fiefdom after erstwhile heartland in July 2024. The operation was ruthlessly efficient. In an interview ahead of polling day, Davey characterised the campaign as an ABC (Anyone But the Conservatives) election. Crucially, the Lib Dem leader’s notorious gimmicks, stunts and japes raised his profile as the prevailing campaign discourse considered Rishi Sunak’s inexorable decline. The Lib Dems, all of a sudden, mattered.

72 MPs — the best result in the party’s modern history — was Davey’s reward. The Lib Dems leapfrogged the beleaguered Scottish National Party (SNP) to become the third largest party in the commons — the largest third party in parliament since 1923 (when the Liberals won 158 seats). In parliamentary terms, this status has secured Davey two questions to the prime minister every Wednesday afternoon, and a more prominent voice for the Lib Dems in the national conversation. Davey’s days of hopeful “bobbing” are long behind him.

For the most part, the Lib Dem chief has used his PMQs pulpit to interrogate Keir Starmer constructively — a conscious contrast to the irascible Tory-Labour exchange. In his first post-election PMQs showing in July, Davey asked Keir Starmer about family carers — a common theme of the Lib Dem election campaign. The PM used the opportunity to welcome Davey to his place: “I am glad that he is in a suit today, because we are more used to seeing him in a wetsuit.”

The comment set the tone for Davey and Starmer’s PMQs dialogue. In the following months, the prime minister and Lib Dem leader thanked each other for their responses and questions respectively. The tenor of their exchanges, far cosier than Starmer’s battles with SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn, reflected the electoral landscape. Labour and the Liberal Democrats forged an implicit “ABC” alliance during the election. The campaign saw unprecedented interest in tactical voting — with a “Get the Tories Out” fever gripping constituencies up and down the country. There were even reports of Lib Dem and Labour activists travelling to each other’s target seats to canvas on behalf of their nominal opponents. (I referred to this phenomenon, at the time, as “Tactical campaigning”). To this day, Davey continues to work alongside Starmer, if tacitly, to corral popular sentiment against the Conservatives and their record in government.

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Like Labour, Davey’s primary challenge this parliament is to entrench his party’s supremacy in newly won seats, while expanding further into Tory-owned marginals. There are, after all, relatively few constituencies in which the main challenger to Labour is the Liberal Democrats — Nick Clegg’s old seat of Sheffield Hallam is one notable exception. Starmer is not Davey’s primary adversary.

But the politics has been complicated by Labour’s sudden unpopularity. The downward trajectory the government has ploughed in recent months has given Davey additional incentive to create distance between himself and Starmer. Above all, it has upped the stakes in the Liberal Democrat search for a cohesive political identity — one with which voters can identify positively (not only negatively, in an anti-Tory ABC sense).

In recent weeks therefore, the Lib Dems have added a hard edge to their political messaging. A prominent manifestation of this came when deputy leader Daisy Cooper responded to Rachel Reeves’ statement in the commonsthis week. “Let us be blunt”, Cooper began, “the budget has not worked.”

She went on: “The chancellor says that the government’s No. 1 mission is growth, but to date there are no signs that the government are going to deliver it. The national insurance contributions rise is self-defeating…

“The chancellor should not have gone to China unless there was a commitment that Jimmy Lai was going to be released.

“Does the chancellor now accept that the national insurance increase will damage growth?”

The diatribe followed days of snappier press releases being pinged into journalists’ inboxes by Lib Dem HQ. One called on the chancellor to cancel her trip to China amidst the “ongoing market turmoil”; another suggested Reeves should “reverse the misguided and self-defeating jobs tax”; and, commenting on the case of Tulip Siddiq, Lib Dem Cabinet Office spokesperson Sarah Olney reflected that “people rightly expected better from this government.”

Electorally, such stances make sense for the Liberal Democrats. The party saw 72 MPs elected in July, in significant part, because it was seen as the best way to uproot Conservative representatives in particular patches. If this anti-incumbency fervour continues into 2029, and voters wish to dispense of Labour, the Lib Dems established electoral purpose in Conservative-facing seats — its now-heartlands — will be shot.

Davey must prove to his voters that the Lib Dems operate, in the commons and across the country, as an alternative to Labour — not simply as Starmer’s electoral back-up in more affluent, leafier constituencies.

The question concerning the Lib Dems’ political identity animated Davey’s first major address of 2025, which he delivered this morning. Addressing activists and the assembled press, the Lib Dem leader called on the government to negotiate a new customs union with the European Union (EU) to “turbocharge our economy in the medium and long term.”

He said: “The prime minister has at least recognised the need to reset our relationship with the EU. But so far, I’m afraid, that only seems to amount to saying ‘No’ more politely than the Conservative.”

Davey added: “An agreement to work towards [a customs union] would unlock big economic benefits for the UK now and start tearing down those damaging Conservative trade barriers this year. It would be a win-win for our country, and I still can’t understand why the government continues to rule it out.”

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In recent months, Davey has also sought to position the Lib Dems as the only party willing to criticise US president-elect Donald Trump. Back in November, Davey said Trump’s election marked a “dark, dark day for people around the globe.”

He added: “The next president of the United States is a man who actively undermines the rule of law, human rights, international trade, climate action and global security. Millions of Americans – especially women and minorities – will be incredibly fearful about what comes next. We stand with them.”

In his speech today, Davey insisted that an EU-UK customs union could see Britain deal with “president Trump from a position of strength, not weakness.”

Also notably, the Lib Dem Europe spokesperson James MacCleary introduced a ten-minute rule bill in the commons yesterday, calling on the government to back a UK-EU youth mobility scheme as part of its Brexit “reset”. The speech was well attended by the 72-strong Lib Dem caucus.

MacCleary told the House: “I know that there will be many on the Labour and Conservative benches who know that the youth mobility scheme with the EU is the right thing to do. It is time to rebuild our relationship with Europe and set our young people free.”

The Liberal Democrats’ enhanced parliamentary status grants them opportunities that have eluded them ever since ex-leader Nick Clegg led the party into coalition and, in 2015, the electoral wilderness. Today, Davey is using it to expand on his party’s political identity and propound a positive vision.

The Lib Dems will also continue, as is their reputation, to cultivate favour in the party’s 72 constituencies. Lib Dem MPs will seek to defy removal by being relentlessly local — in ways that their Tory predecessors, many former cabinet ministers, were not.

In this regard, the local elections in May — ever prime hunting ground for the Lib Dem machine — will provide a timely status update on the party’s progress. Already, you can sense Davey’s “Tory removal service” once more shifting into gear.

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