Why is he always grinning? There is something manic and unsettling about the relentless good cheer with which Ed Davey is waging his election campaign. This week, the leader of the Liberal Democrats has embarked on a series of increasingly perilous stunts. On Tuesday he went paddle-boarding on Lake Windermere, during which he fell off said paddle board five times in 15 minutes. Images of Davey bobbing about in the water with his life jacket riding over his chin was a low point in the lofty history of British liberalism. On Wednesday he cycled down a steep road in the Welsh town of Knighton, giggling as he stretched out his legs either side of the pedals. On Thursday he squeezed himself into swimming trunks and a wetsuit top before barrelling (twice!) down a Somerset waterslide.
Whatever Davey is doing, he is certainly not applying for the role of prime minister of the United Kingdom – an office that still commands some scant vestige of respect. But his high jinks on this election campaign are justified as a means to draw attention to the party’s proposed policies. The Windermere episode was an apparent riff on England’s sewage crisis; the slide was in reference – somehow – to Davey’s plans to install mental-health experts in every school. Maybe the slide was a metaphor? Somewhere out there is a Lib Dem apparatchik who knows.
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