Charlie Maynard quits Lib Dem frontbench as pressure on Davey grows
The Witney MP’s exit, reported as part of an attempt to unseat the leader, came days after another spokesperson left and prompted Daisy Cooper to say most MPs still back Davey.
By
Callum Fairbairn
Charlie Maynard has left the Liberal Democrat frontbench, and the BBC reports that he wants Sir Ed Davey replaced as party leader. The Witney MP gave up his post as Treasury spokesman on Friday, in a move first reported by the Financial Times.
In brief
- The Witney MP gave up his post as Treasury spokesman on Friday, in a move first reported by the Financial Times.
- He told BBC Radio 5 Live that Maynard had taken the risk of speaking out first and that the next few days would show whether a groundswell builds.
- No such vote has been reported so far, and neither source says whether other MPs will follow Maynard.
A resignation aimed at the leader
The Guardian says it understands that Maynard resigned as part of an effort to oust Davey, following months of unease that the party is not connecting with voters. Maynard himself has not set out his reasons in the sources available. The BBC said it had approached him for comment.
He was first elected in 2024 for Witney, in Oxfordshire, winning a seat that has traditionally been Conservative and was previously held by David Cameron, by a margin above 4,000 votes. Before entering Parliament, he ran an advisory firm specialising in international mergers and acquisitions, according to the BBC.
His exit follows that of Alison Bennett, the party’s spokesperson for care and carers, who stood down four days earlier, the Guardian notes. Bennett did not say why she went, though the BBC reports that it is understood her reasons were not personal.
People close to Davey accept privately that a small group of Lib Dem MPs are unhappy with his leadership, the BBC says, and they count Maynard among them.
Support from the top of the party
The leadership responded quickly. Deputy leader Daisy Cooper told the BBC that the vast majority of the party’s MPs back Davey, back Davey as their leader at the next election and resent the turmoil. In a statement reported by the Guardian, she presented the Liberal Democrats as the main barrier to a Reform UK government and said Davey intended to take a strong, united party to the country at the coming general election.
Tim Farron, a former leader, also defended Davey. He argued that, under Davey, the party could equal or exceed the “record numbers of MPs” it won last time, and he dismissed the episode with a joke about what critics must have been smoking. Several other MPs, including some frontbenchers, posted messages of support on social media on Friday evening.
Julian Brazil, who leads Devon county council and has criticised Davey before, struck a different note. He told BBC Radio 5 Live that Maynard had taken the risk of speaking out first and that the next few days would show whether a groundswell builds. Brazil called Davey a fantastic leader but argued that voters were no longer listening and that someone else should now set out the party’s vision. These are his views, and the sources do not show whether others share them.
Polls, a conference row and a pension dispute
Davey took over in 2019 as acting leader and was confirmed in the post in August 2020, according to the Guardian. In the 2024 general election, the BBC says, the party won 72 seats, which the Guardian calls its best showing in over 100 years. The Guardian puts the party’s current strength at 71 MPs, which makes it the third largest in the Commons.
Since then, progress has stalled. In national opinion polls, the Guardian says, the Lib Dems now sit fourth or fifth, trailing the Greens and Reform UK. At September’s conference in Brighton, Brazil warned that the party risked sleepwalking into irrelevance and lacked ambition. Davey played the criticism down and unveiled a £17bn income tax cut that he said would be paid for entirely by faster growth from rejoining the EU single market and customs union.
More recently, the dispute has turned to the state pension triple lock. Davey criticised Labour’s Andy Burnham for proposing to change it, saying the change would push more pensioners into poverty and leave today’s workers with a poor pension. One Lib Dem MP called that argument nonsense, according to the BBC, and another said it ignored how millennials see their prospects.
What would trigger a contest
The BBC spells out the party’s rules for removing a leader. A contest can begin if more than half of all Lib Dem MPs vote that they have no confidence in the leader. Anyone wishing to stand must secure nominations equal to a tenth of the parliamentary party, leaving out their own, and be supported by 200 members from no fewer than 20 local parties. No such vote has been reported so far, and neither source says whether other MPs will follow Maynard.
Featured image. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Credit: Tristan Surtel. License: CC BY-SA 4.0.
