Leader of Liberal Democrats Sir Ed Davey Speaks to T&G on Birexit, Boris Johnson and More

The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Ed Davey, has told Times Radio that Boris Johnson has turned the Conservative Party into an "incompetent, indecent and uncaring government."

Speaking to Daisy McAndrew and Tom Newton Dunn ahead of his keynote speech to the Lib Dem conference, Sir Ed Davey said he wants to build on his party's recent success in the Chesham and Amersham by-election and dismissed any future coalition with the Conservatives:

There are a lot of Conservative MPs who we want to go after. And given they've broken their promise...about not putting up National Insurance we're finding already that's having a really bad impact on their reputation in their constituencies. So we really are after a lot of Conservative MPs. In terms of coalition, it's just so far away. These are hypothetical questions. What I am clear (about) is Boris Johnson has sort of changed the Tory Party into a pretty incompetent, indecent and uncaring government. And not surprisingly I won't have a truck with them.

And on the current Liberal Democrat position on Europe, he said:

We remain extremely strongly pro-European. We've always been a party that believes in European cooperation. I think as people see the mess that's happening in our country with the shortage of lorry drivers, the shortage of food processing staff, the shortage in abattoirs, the problems of the ports, the fact that businesses just crying out, I think as a leader of pro-European opinion we'll be seeing a lot more people agreeing with that position.

DM: Do you want to rejoin the EU?

ED: Well, that's not an issue for today. Today's issue is the lorry driver shortage. The problems of the ports, the problems with our farms, of supermarket shelves being empty, the crisis we're seeing in so many parts of our businesses. And you know, we really need to tackle that and we need to come up with solutions to that. The Brexit deal that was agreed by the Conservatives is a bad deal and that is what we need to deal with. We have a long term policy. Let's be clear, we passed it at our conference last September. We've said, in the long term Liberal Democrats want Britain to be member of the European Union again.

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