Ed Davey: Trump’s a bully, Farage is his bootlicker and the Tories can’t fix a church roof

As he addresses the Liberal Democrats spring conference, party leader Ed Davey argues that Britain should have little truck with Trump

At the this moment of peril for our continent, it has never been more important for politicians to say what we really think.

So when I give my speech to Liberal Democrat conference, it won’t surprise you that I’ll be talking a lot about Donald Trump and Nigel Farage. But it might surprise you that I’m also going to talk about church roofs. (Stay with me on this please… I know it sounds weird, but I am a Liberal Democrat.)

I know what you’re thinking and you’re right. It’s easy for me to criticise Trump, since I’m not the prime minister and I don’t have to sit across from him in the Oval Office. But let me tell you something: week after week I look at the Labour benches as I tell Keir Starmer that Donald Trump is an unreliable ally, and I see most of the cabinet trying desperately not to nod in agreement.

They know. You know. We all know. Donald Trump doesn’t care about America’s allies. He doesn’t care about defending democracy. His presidency isn’t “America first”; it’s Donald Trump first.

On the day he won the election, I broke from my normal self-restraint on social media and called him a dangerous, destructive demagogue. At the time, my advisers worried I had gone too far; in fact the truth is worse than I thought.

We cannot ignore him and hope he goes away. We must deal with him. I will wear my white tie and my wife Emily will put on a frock for his state visit – if we absolutely have to – because the United Kingdom must negotiate with Donald Trump.

As well being totally self-interested, Donald Trump is a bully. And just like any bully, you don’t deal with them by curling up in a ball and hoping they’ll leave you alone. And the absolute last thing you do is try to join the bully’s side.

That reminds me of a friend of his, occasionally spotted in the House of Commons, and less frequently in Clacton. Nigel Farage is Donald Trump’s spokesperson in the UK, his defender-in-chief and bootlicker extraordinaire.

My warning from Lib Dem conference is clear: Farage wants to do to Britain what Trump is doing to America. He wants the division, the nasty culture-war nonsense, the economic self-harm of tariffs.

That is why we must stand up to Reform. And no, that doesn’t mean doing what Kemi Badenoch is doing and copying everything Reform says. It means offering a better alternative, by sticking up for Britain and delivering on the things that matter.

OK, you’ve made it this far. Now it’s time for church roofs. Bear with me – it is just as important as raging about Trump and Farage. Kemi Badenoch recently told the self-styled “brainbox philosopher” Jordan Peterson, the Liberal Democrats “are not on Twitter” but they’re “good at fixing the church roof” – as if that’s some sort of insult!

Why on earth would anyone vote for a party that is more interested in fixing stuff than arguing on Twitter? To my mind, that’s everything that is wrong with today’s Conservative Party. It’s why they failed so badly – they never believed it was important to actually get our communities working.

So if you want a party that will work every day to fix the things the Tories broke, a party that won’t be cowed by Donald Trump and won’t be fooled by Nigel Farage, then I’ll see you on the doorsteps of Britain, winning the argument all the way to the local elections in May and beyond.