Sir Edward Davey MP interview

Torrin Wilkins: Hello, and welcome to the Centre Think Tank interview series. My name is Torrin Wilkins, the Director of Centre Think Tank. This week, we are joined by the Member of Parliament for Kingston and Surbiton and the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change during the coalition. He is also a Lib Dem leadership contender. Welcome, Edward Davey.

Edward Davey: You are welcome. Thank you very much

Torrin Wilkins: We will jump straight into the first question. What was your journey into politics like, and how has it shaped your vision for the country?

Edward Davey: I was politically aware at school; we used to talk about politics at home, although both my parents had died by the time I was 15, so they were not that influential. It was really in my year off between school and university, I read a book called Seeing Green by Jonathon Porritt, which really got me into the environment. Then I studied politics, economics and philosophy, and I realised I was a liberal. I did not join a political party at the time. I campaigned in 1987 against the Tories for an organisation called “Tactical Vote 1987”, which was quite successful in Oxford, where we were campaigning. We managed to get a Labour MP elected in Oxford East and a very good swing for the SDP–Liberal Alliance in Oxford West and Abingdon.

That was my first non-party inroad into politics—essentially anti-Conservative. As I became more confident in my liberal beliefs, in the rights of the individual, freedom, internationalism, and the importance of community, I ended up applying for a job with the Liberal Democrats as their economics adviser, even though I was not a party member. I was most surprised to get interviewed and then very surprised to get the job. I decided to join the party. I was particularly inspired and have galways been very enamoured with Paddy Ashdown. I think it was a combination of things: my commitment to the environment, which predates my political activity, being philosophically drawn to the party, and then being inspired by Paddy Ashdown. So, a combination of things.

Torrin Wilkins: One of the things that you mentioned was being in an alliance to remove Conservatives. What do you think about the fact that, within this leadership race, rightly or wrongly, it has been seen as a battle between the more left-wing and more right-wing candidates? And a lot of people would say you are more right-wing, or at least in the party’s terms. What do you think about that general perception?

Edward Davey: I do not think it is quite right, to be honest. I believe that we do need to have a mixed economy. I do not subscribe to the idea that we should go left to the Labour Party, that we should be chasing after Corbynistas and policies like free energy, free water, free this, free that, which some people have suggested might be good ideas. To that extent, I am not that left-wing.

Equally, I have always considered myself to be on the centre-left of British politics. If you think about economics, one often thinks about putting taxes up to pay for public services. I have advocated for all my time in the party. I do not think that puts me on the right somehow.

Do I believe in income and wealth redistribution? Yes, I do. Sometimes these labels are fairly meaningless. I am not terribly clear about my opponent’s economic policies, to be honest. But I think people can see that when I was the Cabinet Minister for Energy and Climate Change, I brought together state subsidies and state policies with private investment and nearly quadrupled Britain’s renewable power and made us the world’s leader in offshore wind power. That was a combination of state and private.  I do not know where you put that in the political spectrum. I call it good Liberal Democrat policy.

Torrin Wilkins: I find that quite interesting, as when we had Layla Moran on here last week, I can quote her directly that “Any leadership contender who does not talk about the economy during this leadership election is doing the party a disservice”. I am interested in what you think about it, because you said she does not have very clear economic policies.

Edward Davey: The economy is massive, and the issues over the next decade are going to be dominated by economics and jobs, as well as how we get the economy to go green.

That combination—creating jobs for young people and people across every region and nation of the country, while tackling climate change through a major economic transition—represents the key economic challenge. I have got a very clear set of policy ideas there, a clear background.

I am an economist with a postgraduate degree as well as an undergraduate degree. I put myself through night school in economics, as part of my work advising on the Treasury Select Committee. I have been around economic policy quite a lot, so I feel well-equipped and clear in my ideas.

I will let others speak for themselves as to whether they think they have a clear idea of the other candidates’ policies.

Torrin Wilkins: To move on to the environment, which is an area we also run a campaign on, we looked at the policies we can learn from the Nordic countries.

What do you think about Norway and how it has introduced so many electric cars? The slightly odd mixture, which includes tax breaks which are partly funded using oil revenue. What do you think about something similar to that in the UK, but instead of using funding from oil, you can tax environmentally harmful cars and then use the revenue for environmentally friendly ones-  essentially, tax-based regulation?

Edward Davey: Yeah, I mean, there is a whole set of ways that you might want to fast-track electric vehicles. The Norwegians, with their massive oil wealth, have managed to move faster  than almost any other country. I think they have a phase-out for petrol and diesel cars by 2025. Liberal Democrats are saying 2030. I am very keen on that. The government’s saying 2035. So the question is what is credible, what is practical, and how do you do it?

I think you can actually go really quickly once you get the charging infrastructure there. I think that charging will be critical, and it is clearly a role for the state, whether through regulation, tax incentives or other mechanisms.  The key is to have clear determination, clarity on objective and an end date, as it can drive so much of the government policy. 

And there is a whole set of different charging infrastructures we could look at. The Norwegians, I think, will probably pay a slight price for going early. If you look at Germany’s experience with green, solar and wind power, it is extremely expensive.  What we achieved with my policies was expanding renewable power at a much lower cost by using competitive auctions, attracting high levels of private investment, building supply chains and creating jobs across the country.  That holistic approach drove the renewable electricity innovation, and I would want to do something similar for electric vehicles.

Torrin Wilkins: I am going to now move on to a topic which has actually been spoken about a lot less. In fact, I do not think I have heard it mentioned yet, so it might be the first time in the leadership election that it has come up.

The 11-plus, more widely known as selection at eleven, is something that Centre Think Tank has been focusing on a lot recently. We are currently writing a paper on it. At the moment, grammar schools have disproportionately low levels of disabled and less well-off students, and disproportionately high levels of privately educated and tutored children, despite being a system entirely funded by the state.

Would you support banning academic selection that takes place at 11?

Edward Davey: I would want to see whether, in communities where it is supported, change is possible.Let us remember the vast majority of the country does not have grammar schools. So this is quite a localised question in a small number of areas, including my own constituency, I should tell you. I have engaged closely with the issues you raise, particularly around disabled access and ensuring that people with special needs and those from low-income backgrounds have greater access to state-funded education, which is critical.

I have always been supportive of the party’s view that you could allow local referenda to get rid of grammar schools, in the small areas where they exist. That seems to me quite a democratic approach. It also puts pressure on grammar schools to reform and become more inclusive of their communities and who they support.

Torrin Wilkins: In our research, we found that there were almost no schools- fewer than 10 out of just over 100 grammar schools in the UK- that had an average or above-average number of disabled students. So my issue is that we have an issue which exists with grammar schools in some places in Cornwall and Lincolnshire, and dotted across England. I would argue it may be more of a national issue, where in some situations the government needs to step in and say no. This is a test designed by someone who believed in the inheritance of memory from father to son, and it was even included in the BBC Two programme Eugenics: Science’s Greatest Scandal.

Would that be somewhere where the government may have to step in, rather than local referenda, because it is such a large issue?

Edward Davey: The government should certainly step in to make sure that people with disabilities are not discriminated against. Discrimination cannot be dealt with only at a local level; it must be addressed nationally.  That is absolutely for sure. And speaking as someone who is the father of a disabled child, I am particularly conscious of the need to ensure that children do not miss out. Every child has only one chance in life.

I have been a passionate campaigner on special educational needs and support for disabled children. Of course, there are some high-functioning disabled children, not just physical disabilities, but other learning disabilities, who can be very high functioning, and one has to make sure that no part of the system is discriminating against them.

For example, I am the patron of an organisation called Disability Law Service. It has recently published a report showing that local authorities are discriminating against autistic children. Under the Care Act, autistic children, like all disabled children and those with special educational needs, are entitled to care assessments.It is quite extraordinary that, according to our research, 41 local authorities were actively discriminating against autistic children, and that does not just affect their education; it affects a whole range of issues in their lives, including their care, their access to leisure facilities, and so on, with knock-on effects for their families.

For me, levelling up the playing field for disabled children and children with special educational needs is a passion and something I have got a huge amount of experience in. Whether it is grammar schools, local authorities, frankly, wherever it is, we have got to make sure that disability is not something that prevents people from getting on.

Torrin Wilkins: One of the interesting conversations I had was because my partner is on the high-functioning end, and she went to a grammar school. Her concern was that policies such as quotas for disabled students, which is one of the proposals for grammar schools, might simply result in admitting those with higher-functioning or less severe disabilities. The grammar schools have already started running tests which are essentially less difficult for people to pass, but in poorer areas, so that they can increase their intake essentially without damaging the reputation of their schools. So my question is whether, beyond local referenda, there is anything you would do at the national level to address the issue, given that selection appears to result in very few disabled students entering grammar schools.

Edward Davey: I think it has got to go far wider than just grammar schools.

If you look at ordinary state schools, and I have seen this in my constituency, some seem to have disproportionately fewer special needs pupils, while others are far more inclusive, and some effectively become the default for pupils that other schools refuse to take. In my view, this suggests a deeper systemic problem.

Do I have an off-the-shelf solution? No, but here’s an idea. Nick Clegg, when he was an MEP, wrote a pamphlet which influenced me, which was basically looking at the Dutch system, where they gave more money to children with disadvantaged backgrounds. When I was an education spokesperson, I developed this into a policy. Sarah Teather and David Laws took it on, and we got it into government. It is called the pupil premium.

As a governor at a local school, I have seen how amazing it has been in bringing people forward. I am really proud to be part of it. I have talked to governors and head teachers who think it is one of the most progressive things that has happened post-war, actually. It is a Liberal Democrat idea. I toyed with the idea of a similar thing for special needs children and disabled children.

Why is that? If you go back to Nick’s original pamphlet, and the way it was designed, the great thing about the pupil premium is that it encouraged schools that were turning away children from more disadvantaged backgrounds, because they were worried about their tables and the rest of it, to actually take them because they were worth more money. Schools were given additional funds to support these children and help them progress.

Could we find a similar approach to special educational needs and disability? Of course, there are funds there, but they are very bureaucratic. the Education Health Care Plan system, which I know very well, not just for my own son but from helping constituents, is working quite perversely for some schools.

There are therefore tools and existing Liberal Democrat ideas that could be adapted to address this through incentives.  You might also want to ensure that Ofsted has some powers to inspect on this basis and highlight where schools have lower-than-expected intakes of children with particular needs.

Torrin Wilkins: The way we analysed data on disabilities in grammar schools was primarily through Ofsted reports, which indicate whether schools have high or low levels of disabled students and sometimes provide breakdowns by category.  One interesting thing I picked up on was that some comprehensives were not taking disabled students. I feel that this issue ends up being one of order of magnitude because in comprehensive schools, even if you look at the top best comprehensives, they still have more low-income students than grammar schools do. So even at the very worst end of the comprehensive system, it seems to be better than the grammar school system with selection in place.

The other question is, do you think that additional funding for these schools will help when a lot of them are looking at grades, and their reputation? If they cannot get people up to an A-star level, they are often not very interested. I still remember that my partner said that their school was keeping people behind if they got below, I think it was an A, essentially for mandatory classes to help them with learning, because they were not doing well enough.

So, do you think in that situation, money will really be enough of an incentive for these schools that do not seem to be very interested in taking anyone who will basically achieve below an A-star grade?

Edward Davey: Well, I have a really odd characteristic. I like the evidence. I like seeing what evidence is and going with that. If I were Secretary of State for Education, I would want to look at this because we cannot have policies of any type of school that are discriminatory. We cannot allow young children to be discriminated against, whether indirectly, intentionally, or unintentionally; that is not acceptable. I am not suggesting for a minute that money might be the only solution, that is why I brought in Ofsted. But you may need to do more things. I mean, one of the things I think is a problem is how we hold schools to account, because there has to be an accountability mechanism.

League tables, however, have produced perverse outcomes.  I remember when I was going around schools as an education spokesperson, I was really alarmed by talking to a number of teachers and academics, and it was clear that children, this is a state school, just an ordinary state primary, but you could replicate this across the piece.

Schools often focused on pupils in the middle attainment bands, pushing them into higher bands to improve results. There were pupils who could just move into the next band and were prioritised. Others who were already secured were left alone. Meanwhile, a small number were intensively coached to move up a band, even if that did not reflect their true level.

They would get criticisms from either the juniors, if it were an infant-junior system, or the secondary, that you gave us these children, you said were level five, but actually they were only level four.

Across the system, the league tables have produced some perverse practices, which were discriminatory and not really effective in holding schools to account, and have incentivised bad behaviourOur policies are quite good on this, which needs to be looked at. I would be happy to see a different way of measuring. I do think there needs to be accountability, but you can get accountability from different systems. For example, sampling systems are a really good way.

There are diagnostic test systems, so one can ensure that parents and the system know that we are getting good value for money, that actually children are getting a good education, without the very formulaic approach we have got now, which can result in quite perverse outcomes.

Torrin Wilkins: For my final question on this issue, you mentioned being open to evidence on grammar schools.  When our paper is published in a few months, would you be interested in reviewing it and considering whether it might influence your view?

Edward Davey: Yeah, of course. I mean, I am always open to new ideas, and I am not, let us be clear, I am not in favour of extending grammar schools, not in the least.

I think they need to be seriously questioned. That is what they should face. That is the issue for me, and there is a tension in liberalism there. I do remember a time when local authorities and local communities had a much bigger say in their education, and funny enough, in that time, education was much broader, richer, more diverse, more child-centric, and rather than having these sorts of national organisations running schools across the country, you had networks of local schools helping each other out, providing a richer curriculum. That has always been, I think, quite attractive. It is one of the reasons why I am a localist and a liberal.

Torrin Wilkins: So, I am quite interested in the local aspects. One of the policies that the Liberal Democrats supported under Paddy Ashdown was the academy programme. Do you have any worries about moving power away from local schools, and towards the national government, as in the Department for Education, being the one that is responsible for them, rather than the local council? Does this take away some of the local accountability that those schools had as community schools?

Edward Davey: I think you slightly misrepresent Paddy there. Academies came on a bit after Paddy.

What Paddy was talking about was local management of schools, and so there was no centralisation. What Paddy was doing was making sure that schools themselves could have more control over the budget and did not always have to go to the town hall. Now that is a good liberal approach, where you have still got a local focus, but the schools themselves have some more control as well. That is a very different beast from what we have ended up with under the Tories and part of New Labour, where you have had a fragmentation of local school systems and networks, where the role of the local authority is dramatically reduced, in a much more centralising way than anything that Paddy would have signed up for.

Just take the classic example of school place planning. It seems to me self-evident, really, that the local authority works with the local community and local schools in planning the future of places, getting data from maybe some central or regional sources, but having control of that.

We have seen under the Tories, and Michael Gove’s shockingly bad experiment of free schools, that place planning has been a disaster. I can point to examples in my constituency where they have wasted huge amounts of money, millions of pounds, because they chose sites for schools and bought them with no discussion with local councils, or the local community, or even the local MP. We could have told them it was really a bad place to suggest for a school. So centralised place planning and this randomness that we have at the moment are extremely damaging and costly. It fails on every account.

That is just one example. I can give you more, where a more localist approach to education policy would be in the interests of the schools, the children, and, of the taxpayer as well.

Torrin Wilkins: Are you concerned about when businesses get involved in schools? That has been one of the big things that we have heard quite a lot about, certainly in our think tank, people worried about academy programmes where there are trusts with business involvement in them. What are your thoughts on that? Would that be part of what sounds like quite a reforming idea of what academies should actually be?

Edward Davey: Well, I will tell you the truth, I have not looked at this in minute detail. In terms of business involvement in education, I have no problem with young people learning about the world of work, the world of business, and the world of enterprise. That seems to be sensible as part of a rounded curriculum.

What I would be against is businesses getting control of curricula and public resources.I am not suggesting this is happening, but I could see the Tories wanting to go there, some behind-the-scenes privatisation. That does not feature in my approach at all. So it really depends on what you mean precisely by business involvement and what that brings. If it brings wider experience, I am not against that. If it is bringing some control away from elected people and specialists in the public sector, I am more nervous about that.

Torrin Wilkins: Moving on to one of the topics that you and Layla have agreed upon in this leadership election. We spoke to Layla last week about Universal Basic Income. She essentially mentioned a report from Compass looking at how it would be funded and suggested about £40 to £60 a week, which I later wrote in Lib Dem Voice. I have been having a discussion with someone who was an asylum seeker, who is currently actually on the Centre Think Tank executive member, who was struggling to live on £45 a week. So there was a bit of worry about the actual level of it. So, in terms of Universal Basic Income, how would you fund it, and what level would you put it at?

Edward Davey: To be fair to Layla, she has said there would be additional benefits, such as housing support remaining alongside Universal Basic Income. So I may compete with her, but I think one should be fair about how I think she has described it.

Equally, that level that we are talking about is not an unreasonable starting place. If you are going to do a big reform like this, I think you do need to phase it in.

My history on this goes back quite a long way. I started work for Paddy Ashdown and Alan Beith as their economics adviser in 1989. And my first task was to develop and cost a Universal Basic Income. We called it the Citizen’s Income, and it was passed and became party policy in 1990, I think, and was the party’s policy for five years.

So, this is a subject that I know like the back of my hand, although a little bit rusty. But I know the basics of it. At the time, the big debate was, through the early 1990s, did you go for a full basic income or did you go for a partial basic income? The analysis showed at the time, as I recall, the good thing about a partial basic income is that not only was it more affordable and you could bring the system in, but it alsohad a lot of the advantages that you are trying to get from the overall system, with less disruption.

So let us be clear what I am interested in Universal Basic Income for. I am interested in it to make sure that unpaid carers get help and get recognition. The vast majority get nothing at the moment, because you only get a carer’s allowance if you can prove that you are working for 35 hours caring for someone.. The reality is that mostly women, and this is a very, very egalitarian policy with respect to gender, and Black and ethnic minority communities, the unpaid carers are mainly women and often from those backgrounds.

Secognising unpaid care, which you would do through UBI, would be actually transformative. It would be one of the biggest wins for women one could imagine. That is one of the reasons I am attracted to UBI. There are other reasons, too. It would benefit the people  for whom the benefit system, economic barriers, and the rest of it can be very confusing and difficult to access, for different reasons.

Let me give you some concrete examples. Homeless people often miss out because they may have chaotic lives, and they may not be able to get themselves to the benefits office and fill in the forms.That is a reality of life, and of the homeless people I have helped over time. Then you have people who move in and out of work, move between areas, or find, for whatever reason, that they fail conditionality tests for work, income, or other requirements.And so the current tax and benefit system is byzantine in nature. It actually misses out on a lot of people, and we as liberals have to face the facts that manyindividuals are not properly helped, supported, and recognised under the current tax and benefit system.

So, I think a Citizen’s Income, starting at a low level, could make a big difference, bearing in mind that the vast majority of people in the population actually would not see any difference because their tax allowance, or their pension, or some other payment would actually be, effectively, their Universal Basic Income. So what UBI does, in my view, is it helps the most vulnerable, and in particular, it helps unpaid carers.

Torrin Wilkins: So, just onto the point about housing that I mentioned earlier. Asylum seekers have housing provided to them by the government,  which is the reason why I made that essential comparison. The worry there was that the Compass report, which I believe she was referring to, also mentioned removing tax-free allowance at the same time. One piece of feedback we received from members was that this would not be something people could live on if other programmes were also removed.

Then there was the worry that you would have an issue where people were essentially receiving less money. The issue is how to pay for a programme. Because if at any point it is going to become something where people can actually live off of Universal Basic Income, to save the most money from existing benefits, for instance, by scrapping those so that everyone has a set amount of money that they can all live on, how would you pay for that?

Edward Davey: Well, I do not recognise the model you have described as the Universal Basic Income that I helped design for the party in 1989–90, or the ones that I have read about over time. I do not know about the Compass report; they can speak for themselves.

But we were very clear back in 1989–90 that a Citizen’s Income would be, frankly, impossible to include housing costs into that, because that would require it to be set at a high level. As always in every aspect of tax and benefits, the devil is in the details.

We took a year to finesse this, with consultations, academics coming in. If the party went down this route, as I hope it would do under my leadership, I would want a very thorough piece of work done. This is not something you adopt overnight.

You say, “Look, in principle, let us have a look at this,” which I think we really, really should, for the reasons I have outlined. The impact on unpaid carers, which is a very big part of my agenda, is about a greener, fairer, more caring society. It is the caring and egalitarian elements that particularly attract me to this idea.

And I would want to make sure that in designing something, it was both affordable, obviously, otherwise it is not going to work, and the best way to meet the goals that I am trying to achieve, and I think the party would want to achieve.

Torrin Wilkins: Last time when I was on Victoria Derbyshire during the last Liberal Democrat leadership election, I asked you about Brexit. And this time, I want to ask, being that we are now outside the European Union, if you had to choose what you thought was the best Brexit model, what would it be and why?

Edward Davey: Oh, it is very difficult because I just think Brexit is a total disaster in any form. I am fairly clear about that.

But essentially, as an internationalist and someone pro-European, someone who believes in cooperation between countries that is in our mutual interest, the model has to maximise that ability to cooperate. That is cooperation economically, environmentally, security-wise and health-wise.

Because we are about to hit probably the deepest recession in our country’s history for at least 300 years, according to some reports, the idea that a Brexit that puts barriers to trade is sensible in that environment is complete nonsense. It is not sensible in any environment, frankly, but even more absurd in this environment.

So I would prefer a Brexit where we are in the single market and the customs union, because that is in the interest of the people of Britain. And that means we will be rule-takers. But, by the way, if you go for the full-on no-deal Brexit, we will be rule-takers anyway in practice. We just do not get any benefits from it.

That is on the economic side. On the climate change side, which I am fairly obsessed with, and I led European-wide negotiations on climate, I chaired something called the Green Growth Group when I was at the European Council for the Environment and Energy. And I managed to persuade the rest of Europe to adopt some very stringent climate change targets, certainly way more ambitious than the Commission thought and the Tories thought possible. I did that because I was at the table.

With climate change being such a big issue, I would want to find some way of shaping a Brexit where we could have some influence at least. I mean, we are not going to have the influence we would have if we were a full member, but we have got to work with other countries on this, we have got to.

In the end, if I may, I know this is a long answer, but it is a critical question and many-sided, and I am very worried about security going forward. Because the sorts of Brexit being talked about will leave our country less secure, they will leave our people, individuals, families, and communities less safe. At the moment we benefit from partnership and cooperation on a whole range of crime-fighting tools, whether it is the European Arrest Warrant, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, or a number of databases that the police and security services can use.

As the government says, “We will not be overseen by the European Court of Justice,” we will be outside a lot of these crime-fighting mechanisms. and that really alarms me. It shows how soft the Tories have gone on crime, just for their Brexit ideology.

So, you asked me about Brexit? It is the one that keeps as many of the benefits as possible, which are so huge, and enables us to find a way, in due course, back, when people come to their senses.

Torrin Wilkins:  Within Centre Think Tank, we have a mixture of Remainers and Leavers, but more Remain supporters than Leave supporters. One thing that we have been pushing for quite a long while is the Norway option. So if you are a Leave supporter within our organisation, it is more, “We think this is the best way to leave the European Union,” and for Remain supporters, it is, “If we must leave, then this is probably the best option.” So, is that something that, in the meantime, before rejoining becomes an option, you would support, or are you interested in just supporting rejoining immediately?

Edward Davey: No. Although my heart, my heart, will never leave Europe. And I know where I would like to be.

As a leader of the party, one also has to use one’s head. My head says that if we were to start campaigning for rejoin now, for an immediate rejoin at the next election, we would be committing political suicide.

Revoke went down very, very badly because it looked like we were deliberately not listening to the British people at all. We did not only just turn off Leave voters, in fact, a lot of voters by large, we were annoying Remain voters as well.

I think, having just gone through that lesson, all the mistakes that were made around that, the idea we should follow it up with “rejoin” for the next election seems to me tin-eared at best.

So while that might be the overall direction of travel, I think you want to be a bit more precise in how one prosecutes that. So that is why we talk about cooperation, how cooperation would be in our interest.

Gradually, bringing people around to the reality that cooperation is a good thing. Now, does that lead you to the Norwegian model? It might well do. It may be that Norway Plus is always ambitious, Norway Plus Plus Plus.

Norway struggled to get into some of the crime-fighting mechanisms. It has taken a decade, and it is still not in them properly. And if you care about the security of your people, and you care about how you tackle international crime and these awful crime gangs that cause so much misery in many communities, then you want to find ways that you can participate in those mechanisms.

As I say, Norway could be a starting point. But I think we need to go further than that.

Torrin Wilkins: So I am quite interested in the fact that you mentioned the Norway Plus idea, which has been mentioned a fair amount. I am assuming that is Norway Plus, a customs union?

Edward Davey: I said Plus Plus Plus, you see, I told you. There was one plus, and then there were three. I mean, the customs union would be absolutely first order priority. Let us just focus on that for a second. These Brexiteer Tories, they say, “We will be great in Global Britain. We will be able to go make all these trade deals,” and so on.

So far, they have come up with trade deals that would not be transparent and Parliament could not scrutinise. We have seen potential trade deals with the USA, which would be disasters for our farmers, reducing animal welfare, consumer standards and food standards.

I do not know how the trade deal with China is going, but at the moment, it is probably not very good from the look of things. So, once you have excluded America and China, this Global Britain does not look like it is going very far to me. As a former Trade Minister for two years, co-author of the Trade and Investment White Paper, someone who sat at the EU Trade Councils, sat in the WTO in Geneva, the Doha Round, and saw how that failed, today’s trading environment for the world looks absolutely disastrous. Disastrous.

So any so-called “freedom” outside the customs union, as put forward by the Tory Brexiteers, is an illusion. It is a dangerous illusion. It is a damaging illusion. We should be in the customs union now. If that is Norway Plus, fine. The other plus-pluses are on things like climate change, on things like security. You can see that I am not very keen on Brexit. The closer the relationship we can have, the more possible it is.

Torrin Wilkins: I have been talking about soft Brexit since 2016, probably before the referendum now. There is an issue when we talk about Norway plus a customs union. Being a member of EFTA means signing up to its 30-odd deals outside of its bloc. Norway, plus a customs union, does not really fit in. I have found that in the conversations around post-Brexit options.

How will you, as a leader, make sure that the Liberal Democrats will actually get the discussion right and make sure that we make sure that we go for feasible options?

Because a lot of the time when I have spoken within the Liberal Democrats, there have been proposals such as Canada Plus or Norway Plus, or lots of other “pluses” that do not necessarily mix properly due to other elements of that model, such as the Norway model or the Canada model.

Edward Davey: Well, I am afraid this is where I take you out of the think tank world and I put you into the world of, no disrespect to you or your members, the world of reality. Because the world of reality will be building on whatever we end up with at the end of this year, either a no-deal or a hard-deal Brexit, and that will be the baseline we go from.

That is a very different situation from the baseline we are at now. So when one talks about where one wants to be, one’s got to take it from reality, not least because the other side will probably be pig sick of negotiations around Brexit, would be my guess.

They’ve just had a five-day marathon looking at how they are going to help each other recover after COVID. Like any country, they’ve got a whole range of different issues on their plates. I think the day after the Brexit deal is done or the no-deal is consummated, we will need to look at the rubble.

They will probably not want to immediately go into discussions about the next stage, would be my guess. Having negotiated a lot in the European Union, in the Parliament, the Commission, the Ministerial Council, I know how many friends we have across Europe, how deeply they regret this whole thing, and how many of them would want to see us back again, as Liberal Democrats would.

But it is the policy of the art of the possible. Sometimes one will have to review what it is we end up with and what legacy Johnson and his cabal bequeath to us. The think tanks and the political parties will then have to look at that. If it is possible to move from that to a Norway Plus Plus Plus easily, well, fine. Could not be happier. If it goes so badly wrong that even some of the more ardent Brexiteers realise what a complete and utter catastrophe it is and they completely change their mind, well, let us take that opportunity if that comes.

But sometimes in politics, you have to have a degree of patience. It is frustrating because of how you would like the world to be. But as a Liberal Democrat, you learn to have a lot of patience, and you learn to take the opportunities when they come. When things do not go your way, as occasionally they have not in the last few years, you try to learn the lessons. And you try and work out what the strategy is to build back, whether it is on Europe, whether it is on the party’s electoral fortunes.

And there is a lot of claptrap talking about quick fixes. “Do this, do that, it’ll be sorted out.” It is not like that. Life just is not like that. Politics really is not.

You need some real vision about where you want to go. And I am talking about a greener, fairer, more caring society, in case you missed that. But I am bringing into that a degree of experience, 30 years in the party, 20 years in Parliament, five years in government, and a lifetime of experience, particularly of caring, which I think will help the party think through some of the challenges that we have got.

Because we are in a bit of a mess at the moment, whether it is over Brexit or anything else, and I just hope people reflect on what the best way is to right the situation we are in, and realise that there is absolutely no quick fix.

Torrin Wilkins: So, unsurprisingly, to defend think tankery, what I was saying was more about this: rather than Norway Plus not being possible in the future, it was that during the referendum and afterwards, we had pro-Norway Members of the Parliament putting forward ideas such as Norway Plus.

So it was more the worry, rather than that specific model not being possible, of making sure we get the messaging and details right for the Norway model, or whichever model we choose. Because we do not want to promote something, realise we can not implement it, and then find out the organisation does not allow it.

That was more what I was getting at, rather than “the Norway model will never be able to add a plus on.”

If we move just to the final question now, what are the three main reasons you would give to members of the Centre Think Tank who are also members of the Liberal Democrats as to why they should vote for you in this leadership election?

Edward Davey: Vision, experience and judgment.

I think my vision of a greener economy, where you bring together the economic challenges we face, which are of a ginormous order, and the climate change challenge, and you have a real vision about how you will use this as a moment to make that shift, that is got to be critical for a distinctive Liberal Democrat position.

I would add to that the need for a fairer society, particularly focusing on education, which you have touched on, but also housing, which we have not. After greener and fairer, I would want my vision to be about being more caring, because if you look at health and social care, the other parties fight and scrabble over the NHS and fail to realise that if you want to sort out the NHS, you have to sort out social care, for the elderly, young adults who are in the care sector, physically disabled people, the whole spectrum.

So that vision of a greener, fairer and more caring society is where I would start.

But then there is the experience that I bring, both as a carer in my own life. I cared for my mother. My father died when I was four, and then my mother became terminally ill when I was 12, so I was a young carer before she died when I was 15. Then I lived with my grandparents, and eventually my granddad died, and my nana became frail, and I was her main carer for a decade or so.

I now have a disabled son who is 12, and my wife and I do a lot of caring for him because he cannot walk or talk, and he has learning disabilities. So that experience of life as a carer, I think, equips me for this critical agenda that, post-COVID, is going to be more significant than ever before.

I would add to that lifetime experience, and the experience in politics of 30 years in the party, 20 years in Parliament, working under many leaders and seeing the machinations of politics. Then the experience in government, both as a junior minister and as a cabinet minister, negotiating at the EU, the United Nations, beating the Tories on negotiations and serving on the National Security Council.

So I think I bring some serious vision to it, experience to the vision, and combine that vision and experience, the key thing that a leader has to do is exercise judgment. That is particularly in negotiations and in inter-party relationships.

The challenge I think for the party ahead of the next election and beyond is, can we develop, first of all, a very distinctive identity for us and recover the lost ground of recent years, but then use that to fashion a progressive liberal alternative to the Tories, which will mean, is there a possibility for us to find a working relationship and understanding, shall we say, with Keir Starmer’s Labour Party?

And I think I bring some tried and tested judgment to that issue, having worked at the feet of Paddy Ashdown when he was doing similar things with Tony Blair in the 1990s, and having been involved in many negotiations, in politics, in business, and at the international level.

So that judgment, which I think is quite essential, is something that I hope I can add to the vision and experience.

Torrin Wilkins: Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for coming to our interview series today. Really a pleasure to interview, so thank you so much.

Edward Davey: You are welcome.

Note: This interview has been edited for grammar, clarity, and flow. The original recording is the final and definitive version.