Lib Dem leader Ed Davey: ‘I ain’t going to surrender to Elon Musk’

Walk through parliament and barely a wall is clear of portraits and paintings harking back to hundreds of years of tradition. Sitting in Ed Davey’s office is a somewhat different experience.

On the wall in front of his desk is a canvas of the Liberal Democrats leader on a rollercoaster at Thorpe Park in a state of mild terror. On the other walls are photos of him doing a bungee jump, playing oversized dominoes and meeting an alpaca. It’s not, perhaps, how you might visualise the corridors of power.

So, burning question: which one was his favourite?

“I did like the bungee jump, although actually I was a bit nervous I confess,” says Davey. “There’s one we did with hundreds of chickens and I’d never held a chicken before so I decided to pick up this chicken. I liked coming down the slide in Somerset, that was great fun.”

Love them or loathe them, the stunts appear to have worked.

Aided by the Tory collapse, Ed Davey led the Lib Dems to 72 seats at the 2024 General Election. That result was up 64 seats and the party’s best for a century, making them Westminster’s third biggest party.

A YouGov poll released recently suggested that Davey must be doing something right.

When asked who Brits thought would make the best prime minister, Davey came out in front when put head-to-head with Nigel Farage (33% to 27%), Keir Starmer (23% to 19%) and Zack Polanski (20% to 15%). He only lost out to Kemi Badenoch (27% to 25%).

“It made me smile,” Davey tells Big Issue. “I have a view about all polls that if you get too focused on them then you lose your sense of direction and in this early stage in the parliament I don’t really think they give you much credence. It’s what happens in elections, what people are telling us when we’re talking to them ourselves on the doorsteps, that resonates with me.

“I’m not without criticism from people but actually I’m really pleased about how that’s going so the polls made me smile but made me raise an eyebrow.”

Reports in The Guardian suggested disquiet among Lib Dems about a failure to lay out a plan to British voters on how to put the country on the right track.

That’s as polls suggest Reform UK and Polanski’s resurgent Green Party have been making inroads.

But Davey has perhaps captured more attention with his international stance on political bully boys Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

A vocal critic of prime minister Keir Starmer’s appeasement strategy in handling the unpredictable US president, it seems like Davey’s plan to end 12-hour NHS A&E waits was a deliberate provocation to Trump. 

Announced at the start of the year, Ed Davey called for a new legal duty to limit the time patients wait with the £1.5bn plan paid for by scrapping the UK-US pharmaceuticals deal. 

The agreement, rubberstamped in December, sees the NHS pay more for medicines while tariffs on UK pharmaceutical shipments into America remain at zero.

“Well I hope he doesn’t like it,” says Davey. “What I find staggering about this thing is that the British taxpayer, the NHS, should subsidise the dysfunctional private American healthcare system because Trump has said so. It just doesn’t work for me.”

He adds: “I disagree with everything that he’s [Trump’s] doing and I’m not convinced that the government’s approach has worked. 

“I had hoped, I’ll be very frank with you, that it would work in a way because I’m a patriot. I want things to work for our country. And if Starmer’s approach of appeasement was going to be the best for the country, then there was a case for doing it.

“I was unconvinced at the start of last year that that was the right approach and, I have to say, the experience of this year has made me think it’s failed.”

Ed Davey is similarly bullish on Elon Musk.

The Lib Dem leader clashed with the world’s richest man on X last September. After Musk called Davey a “craven coward”, the politician hit back on Musk’s terms: with a SpongeBob SquarePants meme. 

As Big Issue meets Davey, X is in the process of backing down over AI chatbot Grok’s controversial feature allowing users to undress women and children.

How does UK politics deal with an unprecedented threat like Musk?

“I think the way he is trying to interfere with our democracy, generally our country, is quite outrageous. For the richest man to come here with his totally unfounded and ignorant comments is shocking,” says Davey.

“I think he’s a malign influence in the world. Actually, he’s maybe got lots of good things he’s doing with electric vehicles and things, and perhaps you give credit where it’s due, but the idea is that I think you should stick to that rather than try to undermine democratic debate.”

Davey has called on the government to build on the Online Safety Act to force X to clean up its act and also wants stricter rules on political party finance, insisting: “Democracy is not for sale”.

But, like the government, Davey is still posting on X.

“A number of Liberal Democrats have made their own personal choices and come off. But I’m in a slightly different position, because I’m the leader of a party and being on a platform where there is no liberal voice, and there needs to be a liberal voice, seems to be quite an important consideration,” says Davey. 

“It’s quite a difficult decision for a politician representing liberalism, and being the main champion of it in this country, to allow a space where lots of people operate not to have a liberal challenge. And, to be honest, I’ve had nice battles with Elon Musk. If I’m not on there, I won’t have those battles.

“I still think if you’re not countering and fighting them in their own battlefield, you’re surrendering and I ain’t going to surrender to Elon Musk.”

Beyond the keyboard wars, Davey’s 2026 big issues are perhaps no surprise.

The NHS and care remain at the forefront. Ed Davey’s son John, who is disabled and needs round-the-clock care, has been a big part of the Lib Dems’ NHS campaigning, tugging on voters’ heartstrings.

The cost of living also comes up on an evergreen list of big issues, as does the housing crisis with Davey pointing to the problem in his constituency of Kingston in connecting new homes with utilities.

He expects to have a “good night” amid a “Labour meltdown” in May’s local elections.

And who knows? Perhaps more stunts will be on the cards to grab the attention of cameras and the voters. 

But that’s not the only reason why Davey is donning wet suits and clinging on to theme park rides.

“There’s a deeper reason,” he says. “I have been worried for some time, for several years, that progressive politicians who want change want to tackle injustice, tackle poverty, tackle social justice, tackle climate change, we have been just too serious.

“What we’ve sort of said to people is we’ve done the analysis, we’ve done the evidence, we’ve looked at the facts, we know what’s right and this is what’s right: so now go and eat your vegetables.

“Whereas the right haven’t really bothered with facts and evidence. They’ve said: have fun, have a pint, I’ll get myself locked in a fridge, I’ll ruffle my hair, flip some burgers and they’ve told jokes, they’ve been smiley and different. So they’ve got an emotion which is positive. Of course, the main emotional challenge is negative. They play on people’s fears and anxieties but they link that to smiles and having fun and I felt they’ve been winning because of that strategy.”

Read more:

• Nationalisation, buses and homes for rough sleepers: This is what Andy Burnham’s Britain would look like
• Brits are getting sick of Starmer’s U-turns – and here’s the proof
• From broken railways to packed prisons: Margaret Thatcher’s legacy continues to cast its long shadow

The old ‘hope vs fear’ battle for hearts and minds might be nothing new.

But Ed Davey is willing to risk being called a “fat man in a wetsuit” – as Labour MP Torsten Bell quipped last year – if that’s what it takes to keep the right out of power and give Brits some much-needed optimism.

“People want to believe that we can make things better and don’t want to say it’s all going to be terrible, you’re going to be murdered in your bed and London’s the most dangerous city in the world,” says Davey.

“Actually we say human beings are good, help them be the best they can be. Be optimistic, be hopeful and play to that positive part in people’s hearts. So that is my view about how you should do politics: use the positive emotions. 

“What is the way to win and to beat Farage and Trump? It’s being true to your values. And values aren’t up for sale. They are the values, and they’re sticking. But there’s no point in doing politics if you lose for your values. You have to win for your values. If that means me doing a bungee jump or whatever it is, that’s what we’re gonna do.”

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