I watched a compelling chat earlier this week with Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey, hosted by Rachel Sylvester, political editor at The Observer.
The event was organised by the paper’s new owners Tortoise Media, and it was a refreshingly honest and frank conversation. I can’t help wondering if there would be more engagement with politics, and less chance for weather vane charlatans to fill the vacuum with their opportunistic bile, if more politicians were as candid as Sir Ed Davey.
You might remember the Party Election Broadcast last June, when the focus was on Sir Ed’s care for his disabled son John, along with highlighting the work done by millions of family carers (he prefers this term to ‘unpaid carers’). Davey has had quite the political journey, going from a fairly serious, stuffy energy minister to a party leader who enjoys political stunts and won the most number of seats in a generation for the Liberal Democrats at the last election. From paddleboarding on Lake Windermere to taking part in an Aqua aerobics class, there wasn’t much he shied away from during last year’s election campaign.
Despite losing both his parents at a young age, and the challenges of caring daily for his son, Davey doesn’t think of himself as ‘unlucky’. In his book ‘Why I Care’, he discusses his own experience, and devotes a number of chapters to other carers and their lives. He didn’t talk much about his caring journey until he became Lib Dem leader, and has discussed with his wife the parameters of what he can talk about, given his son will never have the autonomy to give consent to be spoken about.
One statistic that stood out to me - there have been 25 reviews of the care system since 1997, yet not much seems to have changed. You could probably apply this principle to many policy areas, but family / unpaid carers effectively constitute a second National Health Service. Without them, the whole system would collapse.
Instead of attempting to sound a dog whistle on carers from overseas that appeals to a narrow but vocal demographic of voters, I wish the current Government would spend more time having an honest conversation about voters about reforming the care system, as Ed Davey wants to happen. Carers are massively underpaid, in my book, and do a job most of us would never want to do, hence the reliance on workers coming from overseas to fill the gaps.
In the chat with Sir Ed, he discussed going from being on ‘cloud nine’ about the arrival of his first son to realising that things were not as they should be. His Party Election Broadcast in 2024 moved me to tears, as his devotion to John comes across really powerfully. Whatever your political colours, I’d challenge you to watch it and not feel a similar connection with him as a human being. I’d like there to be a lot more of this in UK politics. Less insults, more honesty.
Sadly, there is a great deal of reliance now on soundbites, obfuscation, and filibustering. Many flagship political interviews on Radio 4’s Today simply feature the chosen Government Minister of the day who’s doing the media rounds, repeating an agreed line, whatever they are asked. It benefits no one, ultimately.
In more general terms, I worry about facts being superfluous in the Trump era part two. ‘Alternative facts’ is a phrase that was introduced during the first act of his presidency, and a recent caller to LBC illustrated the problem perfectly. Presented with evidence that his claims about Government overspending are simply without evidence, the caller was having none of it. When asked what would change under a Reform Government, the only answer was ‘you just wait and see’. Like their recent Damascene conversion to paying more generous benefits (but only to pensioners who lost their Winter Fuel Allowance and parents who have more than two children), nothing comes with the sums worked out. It’s like someone claiming to have solved every Countdown maths problem, but not being asked to show their sums.
Do people really fall for this stuff? I guess time will tell. I need to do far less doom-scrolling on social media for the sake of my own blood pressure, and be a bit more Ed Davey - remembering all the things in life that make me lucky, and focusing on making the world a better place, rather than constantly poking the hornets’ nest without ever offering a solution.
Alex Cann's weekly blog - 9th January
