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Leader says party ‘won’t give up the fight’ to defeat ‘nasty populism’ in first-day speech to delegates The Liberal Democrats’ leader, Sir Ed Davey, took aim at Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and Elon Musk on the first day of his party’s annual conference, saying that they “won’t give up the fight” to defeat “nasty populism” and the far-right party’s “£72m arsenal of hate and lies”. Speaking from the main stage at Brighton Centre, Davey called on the assembled delegates not to be deterred in the face of Reform’s hope “that the anger and the hatred and the lies will grind us down until eventually we just give up”, and praised earlier speakers for showing “why we care and why we fight”. Continue reading...

Leader says party ‘won’t give up the fight’ to defeat ‘nasty populism’ in first-day speech to delegates

The Liberal Democrats’ leader, Sir Ed Davey, took aim at Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and Elon Musk on the first day of his party’s annual conference, saying that they “won’t give up the fight” to defeat “nasty populism” and the far-right party’s “£72m arsenal of hate and lies”.

He contrasted this with Reform, which “care about their own bank balance and they fight because two crypto billionaires gave them 72m quid”.

Davey, who entered conference season having to address frustrations over his leadership expressed by some Lib Dem MPs , also used the speech to recall his early political life as a student campaigning successfully for his university college to boycott Barclays, due to its investments in apartheid-era South Africa.

He spoke of his “visceral shock [and] overwhelming anger at seeing human beings treating other human beings with total contempt” and drew parallels between that experience and the need to not look away “when we see human dignity under attack”.

Davey said: “Today – we are back. Fighting again the fight that fired me up at university. The fight to end injustices. In our country and around the world. The fight to defeat the nasty populism of Trump, Le Pen, the AfD and the rest.