Sir Ed Davey has stoked fury in the ranks of Liberal Democrat MPs after hinting that he would do a post-election deal with the Tories.
The Lib Dem leader appeared to open the door last week to a pact with Kemi Badenoch‘s party to keep out Reform in the event of a hung Parliament.
But yesterday, Lib Dem MPs vented their anger at the idea.
One told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I thought he would have learnt from the mistakes from when we last went into coalition with the Tories.
‘How can he talk about propping up another party when he’s not sorted out what his own party stands for?’
Sir Ed told BBC Radio 5 Live last week he agreed with Mrs Badenoch that it looked like no party would have a Commons majority after the next General Election.
The Lib Dem leader, a Cabinet Minister during the 2010-15 Tory/Lib Dem coalition, then boasted that he was ‘the party leader with most experience of how you manage that situation for our country’.
And despite him later posting on X that it made ‘zero sense to work for years to beat Reform and the Conservatives just to put either of them in power’, a Lib Dem MP said last night that he had clearly floated the idea of another coalition.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey with signage at Brixton underground station in London
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch during a visit to Balgone Barns Farm in North Berwick
The MP said: ‘It has taken the best part of a decade for us to recover from that coalition.
‘I don’t think anyone in the parliamentary party would be happy with that now.’
The fury comes as Prime Minister Andy Burnham was accused of an Establishment stitch-up after cross-party talks on social care got off to a rocky start last month.
Mr Burnham is determined to push for a political consensus on social care in a bid to find a lasting solution.
But Tory sources accused him of staging a stunt after he gave just 18 hours’ notice to hold a tripartite meeting with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
