Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey has accused the Conservative Leader, Kemi Badenoch, of “sneering” at local communities and spending more time on social media than on tackling the issues people face.
In a speech to the party’s Spring Conference on Sunday in Harrogate, Ed Davey said that Kemi Badenoch’s recent comments criticising the Liberal Democrats for not being on Twitter and instead being in their local communities focused on issues like “fixing church roofs.”
Ed Davey said that these comments show the “out-of-touch, disdainful thinking that explains the mess the Conservative Party is in today,” with an attitude that “what happens in our communities is trivial and insignificant compared to debating the true meaning of conservatism on Twitter.”
The Liberal Democrats hope to make big gains against the Tories across the country in key Blue Wall battlegrounds including Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Shropshire and Buckinghamshire.
Speaking to party activists, the LibDem leader said,
“Kemi Badenoch says a Liberal Democrat is ‘somebody who is good at fixing their church roof. And people in the community like them.’ I think she meant it as an insult! But I’ll happily wear it as a badge of honour. Because she’s right: Liberal Democrats fix things.
“Isn’t it telling? Kemi’s sneering attitude that fixing church roofs is somehow beneath her, even beneath politics altogether; that what happens in our communities is trivial and insignificant compared to debating the true meaning of conservatism on Twitter. It is exactly that kind of out-of-touch, disdainful thinking that explains the mess the Conservative Party is in today.
“They have abandoned our communities – leaving schools and hospitals to crumble, whole areas without enough GPs or dentists, and water companies to pump filthy sewage into our rivers.
“It’s why so many lifelong Conservative voters have turned to the Liberal Democrats, it’s why people rightly kicked them out of government last July, and why we have to kick them out of our councils in May too.”
