4 min read38 min

Then we watched what happened.

Hospice beds remained closed. Services were reduced. Hospices consulted on further cuts. Families found that the care they desperately wanted for someone they loved simply was not available.

And this week the i Paper put the consequence on its front page in terms nobody in Westminster should be able to ignore: vulnerable people left to die in hospital corridors and busy hospital wards when hospice care was unavailable.

We cannot keep wondering what happens next. Now we have to make something happen.

I am not a palliative-care expert. I do not run a hospice and I do not pretend to have all the answers. I became involved because when I see something profoundly unfair happening to some of the most vulnerable people in our country, I find it very difficult simply to stand by and watch.

Hospice care offers something extraordinarily precious: dignity, comfort, specialist care and time for families at one of the hardest moments they will ever experience. Yet too much of that care still depends on charities continually raising the money required simply to keep services operating.

Hospice UK is asking the Government for an immediate £112.5 million intervention. That is their figure, not one invented by me. My role has simply been to help amplify the voices asking Government to hear it.

Those voices are becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss.

More than 60,000 people have now signed the Every Hospice Matters petition. Around 19,000 have shared it. Almost 300 MPs and Peers have previously supported the wider call for fair and sustainable hospice funding, representing an extraordinary breadth of political opinion.

Their words show how little disagreement now remains about the principle. Lord Blunkett has urged the Prime Minister to “find the money” for end-of-life care. Senior Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Labour and crossbench voices have all made the same essential point in different ways: hospice care is not a luxury, and the present position is not sustainable.

Lord Blunkett’s intervention is especially powerful because it is personal. He has spoken movingly about two of his longest-standing friends, husband and wife, who entered St Luke’s Hospice in Sheffield together earlier this year and were subsequently buried together. Hospice care, he said, made their final weeks as comfortable, supported and dignified as possible.

That is ultimately what all the statistics, funding formulas and parliamentary arguments are about: real people.

One petition supporter wrote that she had been told she might make it to Christmas. Another described how her mother begged for a hospice bed while only seven of 21 beds were available because of cuts.

Nobody approaching the end of their life should have to wonder whether the compassionate care they need will be available because the money is not. And no family should discover the answer only when they desperately need that care.

The Government is developing longer-term reforms to palliative and end-of-life care. That matters, and sustainable reform is essential. But a longer-term framework cannot become a reason to watch hospices struggle in the meantime.

Hospice chief executives have bills and wages to pay now. Beds are needed now. Families need help now. People are dying now.

That is why I believe Westminster has reached an important moment.

We have moved beyond needing to establish whether there is a problem. We have moved beyond asking whether the public cares. We have moved beyond wondering whether this can command cross-party support. It already has.

The question now is whether all of that agreement can be converted into action.

This week I have asked around 400 Parliamentarians to help do precisely that: through questions, debates, public interventions or whatever Parliamentary opportunity is available to them.

And I have asked them to put one very simple question to the Prime Minister:

“Prime Minister, will you personally receive this national hospice petition and make sustainable hospice funding a national priority?”

We will shortly take those tens of thousands of voices to Downing Street. I believe the Prime Minister should receive the petition in person as soon as possible.

Personally receiving it would not solve the funding crisis by itself. But it would demonstrate that the Prime Minister has heard the patients, families, hospice staff, volunteers, more than 60,000 members of the public and the remarkable coalition across Parliament asking him to act.

Then comes the more important question: what will Government do? There are moments in politics when another sympathetic statement, another consultation or another promise of future reform simply is not enough. For Britain’s hospices, I believe this is one of them.

We have wondered what would happen. We have watched what is happening. Now we need to make something happen.

Because for somebody approaching the end of their life, another week is not simply another week in the political calendar.

Every day matters. This is the time. Now is the moment.

Corin Dalby is Chief Executive of Box Power CIC and founder of the independent Every Hospice Matters campaign.

(Tom Pilston)

12 min read24 min

Ed Davey listens to BBC Radio 2, doesn’t subscribe to any music or streaming service, and CDs still line the shelves with tiles like Music for Lovers, a medley of classical versions of romantic ballads.

“I’m so old-fashioned, aren’t I?” he asks. It is, clearly, a rhetorical question.

David Cameron once taunted Gordon Brown that he was an analogue politician in a digital age. But their contemporary, 60-year-old Davey, has outlasted both at the frontline and leads a party at its electoral zenith, so might be entitled to say modernity is an overrated virtue.

And yet the Liberal Democrat leader meets The House in his Surbiton home at the end of a summer of, if not discontent, then rumbling unease. Some of his MPs fret that the party, lacking a national identity, risks being marooned by changing tides.

A senior Lib Dem MP complains of “a frustration” in the party that “it feels like we’ve been talking about the same things – social care and rivers – and that just felt like we weren’t really moving forward”.

Davey’s response might be described as akin to the warm embrace of an affable python. When criticisms from his own MPs and activists are put to him, his reply is consistent: he smiles, nods, and says he agrees with them.

What does he say to critics who think the party could take a stronger line on being an anti-racist party? “I strongly agree with them – I want to lead on it!”

What does he think of some of his MPs and activists saying the party must communicate better and do more to win northern and urban seats? “I strongly agree with that. The strategy debate is one that I welcome and embrace being part of. And indeed, growing in the North is something I’m extremely keen on.”

It would be a mistake to think, however, that Davey is for turning. One small but telling example is of a recent meeting at which some Lib Dem MPs thought that he had agreed to stop the ‘stunts’.

The series of photo-opportunities in which Davey sent himself up won coverage during the general election, but many fear they have run their course and risk merely highlighting the vacuity of the party’s policy offer.

Asked about them, however, it becomes clear that there has been a misunderstanding. Davey intends to continue with the stunts – or, as he prefers to dub them, ‘visuals’ – including at the party’s upcoming autumn conference, but merely agrees that they should be more effectively tied to a policy “purpose”.

“I don’t think we’d have as many MPs, frankly, as we do if we hadn’t done the visuals that we did last election… So, we’ll continue to do the visuals.”

As for the local elections, where some see stagnation, he sees progress. He insists the results showed his party is “coming back in areas that I thought we wouldn’t come back in”, for example winning overall control of Southport council, securing the first Lib Dem leader of Birmingham city council in a coalition with the Green Party, becoming the biggest party on Newcastle council, and making gains in the London borough of Ealing.

“The message I took from the local elections was that not only were we consolidating where we were in the general election, but we were expanding,” Davey says.

With the two-party system under strain, more seats are being won on a smaller percentage of the vote and, according to Davey, “the prize goes to those parties who are well-organised, can get their ground game out, can get their votes out”.

Lib Dem MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough Tom Gordon is less sanguine; he has argued that the Lib Dems failing to make sweeping gains across the country was a “warning sign” that the party has been operating in “a very cautious way” so far.

The Lib Dem leader, speaking from the garden of his large family home in south-west London, does not appear to be rattled but  instead radiates domestic content.

Laundry hangs from the line; his 12-year-old daughter’s cello leans haphazardly on an old green sofa. A cushion cover reads, “We stay together for the sake of the cat.”

Davey insists that his party is the “most united party in Westminster” and praises critics like Gordon, unprompted: “You build up grassroots, you build that trust, and whether it’s what Tom Gordon’s done in Harrogate, what our colleagues have done in Hull, our colleagues have done in Sheffield, I can see that community politics delivering in quite significant parts of the North.”

Gordon has also been asked by Davey to chair a review of the party’s electoral strategy in the North of England, where the party has only four MPs but hopes to grow further and add to its 2024 record of 72 seats.

“We need to ensure that we’re covering issues that matter, and I would point to issues like transport in the North,” Davey says.

“When I talk to my colleagues, whether it’s in Manchester or Liverpool or Sheffield or Hull or Leeds, they say that the thing we have lacked and people have talked about but never delivered is a proper transport strategy, which means that people can get around.

“If you go back to George Osborne, who talked about this, he didn’t deliver on it. Boris Johnson talked about it, didn’t deliver on it, and they haven’t really grasped that. We need to show that we have thought through that and that will be really, really important.”

Lib Dem MP and party president Josh Babarinde has been leading consultations with members that will result in a once-in-a-parliament strategy review at the party conference in September. Babarinde said a new strategy was needed “to meet this new moment” of rising populism on the left and right.

Babarinde has warned, however, that the review must not stray into areas which are the leader’s purview – a message aimed at ensuring it does not turn into a public, damaging attack on Davey.

The leader believes the Lib Dems are in their “strongest position in over a century” and wants to turn his party’s gaze not inwards but towards the opportunities opening up for it – and the value of having an experienced leader at the helm.

Davey is often asked what exactly the Lib Dems are for in this new era of multi-party politics, with the Greens squeezing Labour to the left and Reform UK outperforming the Tories in the polls on the right. His answer is that the Lib Dems are there to stop Reform getting into government, either by itself or in a right-wing coalition with the Conservatives.

“If we do really well, as I think we will do against the Tories and Reform, that stops a Reform government and it stops a Tory-Reform government, and it makes the chances of a hung parliament extremely likely.

“The chances of a hung parliament are larger than I have known… and in that I’d be the most experienced leader. I’ve been around a little while, I’ve been in government, I’ve been a junior minister, I’ve been a Cabinet minister, seen those types of upfront discussions in a balanced parliament, and I’d be the most experienced party leader, and so for me, that’s quite exciting.”

Davey shrugs off a question about whether he thinks being too associated with the previous Coalition government would do more harm than good, insisting that public opinion of the Coalition years might be “changing”.

He refuses to draw any red lines on what the Lib Dems might compromise on to enter a coalition with Labour or any other party.

Despite his insistence that he wants to expand the party’s northern reach, he admits most of his targets are Tory-facing seats.

“I can’t deny the facts; that the vast bulk of seats that we can take at the next election are off the Conservatives, and if we don’t take them, Reform will take them,” he explains.

“If you look at all the projections that I see, we are likely to more than hold our own, and I think we’re being underestimated.

“That Tory-Reform axis is truly frightening, and we need to show that there’s a party that is true to British values – whether it’s on the economy, whether it’s on defence – who will defend those British values and can win.”

“That Tory-Reform axis is truly frightening”

Reflecting on where his party has had the most cut through with voters during his time as leader, Davey reckons it has been for appearing the most anti-Trump.

“We’ve been the ones leading that by a country mile,” he says, accusing other political leaders of “appeasing” the US President.

Davey also wants the Lib Dems to lead on being an anti-racist party, describing the level of racial hatred in the UK as “disgusting and depressing”. “We just have to call people out more,” he says.

He accuses Reform UK activists of racially harassing a friend, a young British woman living in the South East of England with a family background in India, claiming they told the  woman they would take her passport and revoke her citizenship when they got to power.

“When people are coming to people’s doors and saying that outright, that is disgusting, and I never thought we’d get to that position,” he says.

“But we have a political party whose activists are doing that and they have to be beaten, and they have to be challenged. Certainly, the moral responsibility I’ve talked about beating Reform is about beating that racist element that we’re seeing in our politics.”

In response, a Reform spokesperson said: “Ed Davey should either name the activists involved, provide evidence of this alleged incident or withdraw this baseless claim.

“Reform has never proposed seizing passports or revoking the citizenship of British citizens. This smear is the last refuge of a party with absolutely nothing to say and whose leader is flatlining in the polls.”

At this year’s conference, taxation will be firmly on Davey’s agenda, alongside his existing top priorities of health and social care, EU relations and electoral reform.

“I don’t think you can tackle the cost of living crisis unless you address the fact that we are so overtaxed in our country now,” Davey says. “If you can’t come through with a credible policy to help people, I think you’re not answering the core requirement of government. You are going to have to look at that.”

The Lib Dem leader would not be drawn on which specific tax policies will be announced at conference.

Speaking to The House in 2024 following the general election, Davey said he wanted the NHS to be more like the Danish health system, with better health outcomes and higher patient satisfaction. 

Denmark places a higher tax burden on its citizens than the UK government does, however. According to the OECD, an average single worker faces a ‘labour tax wedge’ of approximately 36 per cent in Denmark compared with around 29 per cent in the UK.

Davey insists that there is “a whole series of really practical ways you can start reforming the care system that aren’t going to cost the earth” and would, “over a relatively short period”, start saving money in the NHS. The Lib Dems’ proposals include integrating health and social care to reduce delayed discharges and hospital pressures and expand community care, all while taxing banks more heavily, closing tax avoidance loopholes and reforming taxes on wealth and capital rather than increasing taxes on ordinary earnings. However, this plan would still require significant initial investment in social care.

“I start by saying we need to grow the economy. And while I’m sure every political party will say that, the challenge to political parties is, ‘What’s your plan?’” Davey says.

“I see no plan from Labour, and Burnham has not talked about growth, as far as I can see, other than suggesting that a whole set of new mayors would somehow magically deliver growth. I don’t think they would.”

The leader insists the Lib Dems are the “only party with a growth strategy” for the whole country and refers to new Prime Minister Andy Burnham as “Avanti Andy”.

“He talks about London and Manchester. What about all the other areas we need to grow? The rural areas, the coastal towns, the small market towns. We’ve got to grow a whole economy, so I don’t see a growth strategy from Labour. I just see nothing from the Conservatives… And most of Reform’s policies would actually hurt growth.”

Davey has often said of former prime minister Keir Starmer that he is a “decent guy”. He now uses similar faint praise for Burnham. “We’ll see if the new Prime Minister is able to get rid of the chaos,” Davey says. “If he does, that’s a disaster for the extremists because it means we can start debating the real issues in a practical way, putting forward our ideas, and we will flourish in that environment.”

Davey has previously described his former boss and Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown as his political hero, saying he admired his version of “gritty liberalism”.

So, how does Davey think he is “gritty” himself? Gritty, he says, “means that you keep fighting, even in difficult circumstances, because you believe in your values and you want to triumph. I’ve obviously got a very different life story to Paddy, but I’ve had a few challenges”.

Davey lost his dad when he was four, then was a carer for his mum before she died when he was 15. He went on to become the father and carer to his disabled son, John, who is now 18 years old.

“If you’re a gritty fighter, you take on adversity, you learn from that, and I like to think I’m quite an empathetic person, having had that experience as a carer,” Davey continues.

“And when I apply that to ideology and policy, it means that I want us to be seen as a party that really cares about people and that caring is missing from our political dialogue at the moment. It never used to be.” 

Illustration by Tracy Worrall

4 min read10 min

Whenever there’s discussion of a potential leadership challenge – which in the last decade has meant most of the time – you cannot move for explainers in the media about how it all works: the various stages, the nomination thresholds, the details of the franchise. No complaints from me; explaining this stuff is good for trade.

The need for explanation is made more urgent by some of the rules being in almost constant flux. Reading a fascinating new study of the history of Conservative leadership contests, Coronations and Defenestrations by Lee Evans, it is striking how the party has changed its rules after almost every contest. To take just one example from the book: since 1965, the number of nominees a Conservative candidate has needed to stand for the leadership has varied from two to 100 MPs. Labour is just as bad.

I have spent a worryingly large amount of my life memorising and understanding these rules, but increasingly I wonder whether I should have bothered. Because it is also striking how many leadership contests, especially those involving incumbents, don’t run neatly along the tramlines set by the rules. Take, for example, the one we have just had. There was, in the end, no formal challenge to Keir Starmer; he resigned in the face of political reality and Andy Burnham replaced him in an unopposed election. Not a single vote was cast. The same was true in 2022 for Rishi Sunak. Squint and we could be back in the 1950s.

Indeed, the last six mid-term changes in prime minister have come about when the incumbent has seen the writing on the wall rather than because any formal leadership process has been initiated. Both Theresa May and Boris Johnson even successfully survived formal votes of no confidence from their MPs, only to jump ship pretty soon afterwards.

Evans refers to the immunity from challenge these votes supposedly gave as a “paper shield”.

The last Conservative Party leader to be voted out of the leadership was Iain Duncan Smith in 2003; the last one in government was Margaret Thatcher in 1990, and even she announced her resignation mid-contest.

It’s almost always more about raw political power than anything else

For Labour, I think you can make a case that the last comparable example would be JR Clynes, over a century ago, and it’s never happened to a Labour PM.

This isn’t to say that any of these contests went against the rules (parties have processes for what happens when a leader resigns and when there is just one candidate). Nor is it to say that the rules don’t matter: they are obviously there in the background, helping to structure the pressure the leader is under, and explaining why sometimes people jump before being pushed. But still, surveying the downfall of prime ministers, it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that it’s almost always more about raw political power than anything else. 

Another example: in January, the (then) PM was powerful enough to block the (current) PM from standing in a by-election. By May, and following some terrible election results, suddenly he wasn’t – with all the consequences that followed. Once it became clear (to many) that he couldn’t stay on, so his power drained away.

Measuring power has been causing headaches for political scientists ever since Robert Dahl’s The Concept of Power in 1957 and his famous definition that “A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do”. Since then, both its definition and its correct measurement have been much argued over. Yet just because it’s tricky to pin down doesn’t mean we shouldn’t realise its importance – and that it trumps the rule book every time.

Postscript: I was at university with someone who, when they first encountered Dahl, wondered (unfortunately out loud) how he’d managed to produce such a detailed study of the political process in New Haven, Connecticut and write all those children’s books. He never lived that down. 

Further reading: L D Evans, Coronations and Defenestrations (2026); R Dahl, The concept of power, Behavioural Science (1957)

East Bank’s first joint, free public festival in Summer 2026, The Music is Black Festival (Image credit: Rahil Verma)

This article has been funded by Sadler’s Wells; London College of Fashion, UAL; and University College London on behalf of East Bank

East Bank is unique. Situated at the heart of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, the UK’s newest cultural and education quarter is an experiment in creative collaboration which is already having an effect. It is contributing 2,500 jobs and £1.5bn for the local economy and bringing an additional 1.5 million visitors to the park and four local Growth Boroughs each year; offering an evolving model of inclusive growth for local economies and communities across the UK.

What sets East Bank apart is the collaboration between government and world-leading cultural institutions, and between those global institutions and local communities. This enables a creative environment where researchers and students can in turn collaborate with dancers, designers, broadcasters and community groups to solve shared problems.

London 2012 inspired investment at a scale and ambition not matched since: £600m from City Hall enabling a £1.1bn project in development with additional support from central government to the local economy. This enabled five complementary organisations – BBC Music Studios; London College of Fashion, UAL; Sadler’s Wells; University College London (UCL); and the V&A – to commit to new homes and a new association with each other.

Shared trust between government and cultural institutions in taking this leap together has made tangible impact today, not just in terms of the statistics above but in the vibrancy of east London itself.

A commitment to the local area was as vital to East Bank’s founding as the Olympics. It did not arrive on empty ground; East Bank is part of a much longer story of making and remaking, building on local relationships developed over time. With stark challenges to social cohesion across the UK and disillusion especially felt by the young, an investment in one of the youngest and most diverse areas of the country needed to deliver for east London.

And deliver it has.

Building on more than 100 years of shaping lives through fashion, London College of Fashion, UAL’s new state-of-the-art facilities are nurturing pioneering creative talent and opening up opportunities for connection.

The UCL East campus is accelerating breakthroughs in robotics, AI, ecology, sustainable cities, green manufacturing, decarbonised transport, assistive technologies, fair finance, and global health.  

Sadler’s Wells East is home to world-class dance, artist development, a new choreographic school and free participation. For the first time in the UK, young people can study a Level 3 qualification in Hip-Hop theatre through Academy Breakin’ Convention.

V&A East Storehouse and Museum provide unprecedented access to collections and ideas, demonstrating creativity’s power to drive change. BBC Music Studios will perform, record and broadcast live music across a full range of genres to the widest possible audiences.

With London’s cultural and creative industries contributing £64bn to the UK economy each year, the benefits from this public investment are far reaching.  

Exciting new cross-collaborations are emerging, particularly through East Bank’s work with young people. East Ed, established by London Legacy Development Corporation, supports teachers, inspires young people and creates pathways into creative careers. Over 9,000 young people have taken part in East Summer School and East Careers Week, expanding access to industry, building skills and confidence across courses from fashion design to engineering and skateboarding. The Good Growth Hub’s STEP programme also offers paid traineeships with East Bank partners.

The most exciting test of East Bank’s collaborative potential is still under way. The Music is Black Festival welcomed 12,000 people for a free celebration of sound, culture and community in its first weekend alone. Developed in dialogue with prominent Black British musicians and academics, it offers a culturally significant programme free to the public.

The inspiration of East Bank’s founding, its model of creative collaboration and its promise to local people is a route to renewal anywhere. Our door is open and, as it says in neon over the entrance to Sadler’s Wells East, you are welcome.

Find out more by visiting www.queenelizabetholympicpark.co.uk/east-bank