New Delhi: Picture this — against the backdrop of blue skies dotted with pillowy clouds, a 58-year-old man strapped to a harness is thrown down from a towering crane. But this is not your regular bungee-jumping thrillseeker, it’s a politician, asking the people of the UK to vote for his party.
“Do something you’ve never done before, vote Liberal Democrat!” he screams as he plunges towards the ground, hands flailing, quite a Sunday spectacle for the seaside town of Eastbourne in England.
This may seem quirky but it is a norm for Leader of the Liberal Democrats Sir Edward Jonathan Davey, or Ed Davey as he is better known, as he campaigns for a win in Thursday’s snap elections. He has done it all — from tumbling into a pool at a Warwickshire water park wearing a linen suit and a Panama hat, to riding rollercoasters after releasing his party’s manifesto.
“I’ve been told that an election is a rollercoaster. So I’m going to go on a rollercoaster,” he’d said at the manifesto unveiling.
A lot of people are on the cusp of doing something they’ve never done before – taking a leap of faith and voting Liberal Democrat… so I decided to do something I’ve never done before too. pic.twitter.com/qW8Q8k1dCg
— Ed Davey (@EdwardJDavey) July 1, 2024
The video of his latest stunt — him seemingly nervous but screaming loud and clear — is all over UK media and has regaled social media users as well.
Davey has used his quirky escapades to communicate his party’s messaging as well as take snarky digs at his opponents.
In May, he ‘fell off’ while paddleboarding in Lake Windermere as he spoke of the Lib Dems’ plan to tackle the sewage crisis. 2023 was the worst year in terms of water pollution for the UK, with rivers in northern England being the most contaminated. Lake Windermere is in the northwest of the country. During his campaign, Davey said local environmental experts should be on water companies’ boards for sewage spills to be taken seriously, The Independent reported.
“We can marry having a bit of fun with some serious messages,” Davey said during a campaign stop in Carshalton. “When I fell off a paddleboard in Lake Windermere, yeah everyone thought it was a laugh, but actually it was making a serious point about sewage,” he added.
Still not as wet as Rishi Sunak.
Thank you @timfarron for being there to fish me out of the water. 🐟 pic.twitter.com/oLsbch1a1A
— Ed Davey (@EdwardJDavey) May 28, 2024
Another one of his campaigns saw him ‘take down a blue wall’ of Jenga symbolising the Lib Dems taking down the Tories.
Davey, who took over the reins of the Lib Dems in 2019, is leaving nothing unchecked on his bucket list as he tries to engage and convince the British public to vote in favour of his party. He only brings back memories of former PM and London mayor Boris Johnson left dangling on a zipline, Union Jacks in hand, in 2012 during a celebration for the Olympic Games.
“If you do it the traditional way, you make a speech at a lectern, you might get a tiny bit of coverage but people aren’t that engaged with it. “I think that by taking a slightly different approach — with a bit of humor, a bit of emotion — you can get people’s attention,” Davey said.
The Liberal Democrats were the third largest political party in Britain’s Parliament, but recently sank to fourth position.
The party “barely features in current political discussions lately, and is flatlining in the polls even as the government sinks ever lower. Only one in three voters has an opinion on party leader Ed Davey, and even fewer have much idea what his party offers,” read a March analysis piece in The Guardian.
Opinion polls predict that the Liberal Democrats may win up to 50 seats as opposed to 11 in the 650-member House of Commons in the previous election of 2019.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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