Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said his party \u201cwon\u2019t give up the fight\u201d to defeat \u201cnasty populism\u201d as he issued a rallying call to members on the first day of the party\u2019s annual conference.<\/p>\n
Speaking from the main stage, he took aim at Nigel Farage\u2019s Reform and billionaire X owner Elon Musk as he pointed back to his first ever political campaign, to successfully press for his college to boycott Barclays Bank because they invested in Apartheid-era South Africa.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday \u2013 we are back. Fighting again the fight that fired me up at university.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fight to end injustices. In our country and around the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fight to defeat the nasty populism of (Donald) Trump, (Marine) Le Pen, the AfD and the rest.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fight to stop the world\u2019s richest man who learned racism in apartheid South Africa from funding racism around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also said he would fight Reform UK and their \u201c\u00a372 million arsenal of hate and lies\u201d after they received the sum in donations from two crypto billionaires.<\/p>\n
And he pointed to the \u201cfight to defend the Royal National Lifeboat Institution after volunteers for the coastal rescue charity were recently targeted online amid anti-migrant protests.<\/p>\n
He said Reform UK \u201cdon\u2019t speak for the real United Kingdom\u201d and are \u201cbanking on\u201d people not caring enough to keep fighting and hoping they will \u201cget tired, depressed\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat the anger and the hatred and the lies will grind us down until eventually we just give up.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he said he hoped they were watching and would see \u201ca party that won\u2019t be ground down. That won\u2019t be deterred. That won\u2019t give up the fight\u201d.<\/p>\n
He then led the audience in a chant of \u201cwe care, we fight\u201d and then played the song ‘Golden’ from KPop Demon Hunters.<\/p>\n
Sir Ed Davey serving up fish and chips at Brighton Palace Pier Credit: Stefan Rousseau\/PA<\/p>\n
Davey earlier said his party would be ready if Prime Minister Andy Burnham calls a general election in a bid to consolidate his position.<\/p>\n
He said his party has a \u201cdistinctive position\u201d in British politics with their goals to take the UK back into the single market and the customs union, which they believe is key to growing the economy and bringing down taxes, as well as focus on the NHS.<\/p>\n
Also on the first day of the conference, Lib Dem health spokesperson Helen Morgan set out a \u00a3600 million plan to improve maternity care \u2013 including proposals to bring in one-to-one midwifery for every woman in labour backed by a round-the-clock senior consultant.<\/p>\n
The party said the measures will pay for themselves by reducing how much the NHS has to spend on compensation for maternity negligence claims every year \u2013 totalling \u00a31.3 billion in 2024-25.<\/p>\n
And education spokesperson Munira Wilson said the party would bring in a guarantee to provide 100 hours of work experience for students from GCSE age to age 18 to tackle the crisis of young people not in education, employment or training.<\/p>\n
From Westminster to Washington DC – our political experts are across all the latest key talking points. Listen to the latest episode below… <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said his party \u201cwon\u2019t give up the fight\u201d to defeat \u201cnasty populism\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-776338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}