Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has said the vast majority of Scottish people’s values are "the reverse of Reform” as he also claimed his party is in talks with disillusioned Scottish Conservatives ahead of next year’s Holyrood election.
Speaking to The Herald during a visit to Edinburgh College’s renewables training centre on Wednesday, Sir Ed said he believed the Scottish Liberal Democrats were poised to be the “surprise of the election”, following their strongest Westminster performance in a century last summer.
The party leader, who joined Scottish Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton, Edinburgh West MP Christine Jardine and Edinburgh Northern candidate Sanne Dijkstra-Downie, said his party would take the fight to both the SNP and Reform UK in May 2026, while offering a “positive, fair” alternative.
“I think the vast majority of Scottish people’s values are the reverse of Reform,” he said.
“If you look at their positions, whether it’s on cutting people’s energy bills — they would make them higher — or on the economy, their policies have been an absolute disaster. Do people really want Farage’s Scotland?”
Recent polls suggest the Lib Dems could win more than ten MSPs — potentially giving the party more influence at Holyrood than at any point in two decades.
The Scottish leader, Alex Cole-Hamilton, recently told The Record that if Reform supports the Lib Dems and Labour to form a pro-Union majority at Holyrood, this would not "tarnish" that result as he also said he wanted to be the next Deputy First Minister.
Asked about the remarks from his Scottish counterpart, Sir Ed told The Herald he does not seek Reform support.
He said: “We are not responsible for how other parties vote and we certainly don’t seek their support. We are opposed to everything they stand for and we will tell them that every single day before and after the election.”
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Asked whether Scottish leader Alex Cole-Hamilton could become Deputy First Minister in the event of a pro-Union majority at Holyrood, the UK Lib Dem leader said he was “a strong believer in the powers of the Scottish Parliament and the powers of the Scottish Liberal Democrats”.
TheUK party leader also said that he has been in discussions with discontented Conservatives in Scotland following the defection of former Tory MSP Jamie Greene, who joined the party earlier this year.
Describing Mr Greene as a “great guy”, Sir Ed said many centre-right voters were unhappy with the direction of the Conservatives under figures such as Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick.
“At the recent conference, I talked to Conservatives who listened to the likes of Badenoch and Jenrick and they say, ‘Where has the Conservative Party gone?’” he said.
“The Ruth Davidson Scottish Tories must be holding their heads in despair because those values have now disappeared in the modern Conservative Party.”
Pressed on whether welcoming Mr Greene — who supported Brexit — risked diluting the Lib Dems’ pro-European stance, Sir Ed insisted the party had not altered its views but Mr Greene had.
“Jamie has changed, we haven’t,” he said. “He knows he’s joined a party that’s pro-European, and we are not changing our position.”
He added that former Conservative voters disillusioned by their party’s rightward drift were now “finding a home” in the Liberal Democrats.
“When we talk to lifelong Conservative voters, they say: ‘My God, what on earth is happening? This isn’t the Conservative Party I stood by, which believed in tolerance and decency,’” he said.
“They’re not going to the SNP because they believe in the Union, and they won’t go to Labour because they’ve opposed them for years — so I think we’re home for them.”
He said the Liberal Democrats would target SNP seats and focus their campaign on fairness, the NHS and the cost of living.
“We are taking on the SNP and making a positive case for the Liberal Democrats,” he said. “People are just fed up with the SNP. They’ve had a long time and they like to blame others — but have they ever looked in the mirror?”
He added: “We are going to be the surprise of that election. Just like in Westminster in 2024, when people said we weren’t going anywhere — and we delivered our best results in over 100 years.”
During his visit to the college’s Renewables Centre in Edinburgh Northern — one of the party’s key target seats —Sir Ed outlined plans to halve energy bills through major investment in clean power and home insulation.
“Our plans on renewables are critical to our way of cutting people’s energy bills and helping with the cost of living, which, wherever you go, is massive,” he said.
The Liberal Democrat proposals include investing in cheap, clean renewable power and launching a ten-year home upgrade programme with free insulation for low-income households.
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