Ed Davey focuses fire on Labour – for now

Of all the ministers involved in the Coalition negotiations over energy bills, Ed Davey has had quite the worst experience. He has had to water down his conference bullishness about standing up to the Tories to a sort of amiable plea that the Lib Dems really are keeping the Coalition green. When his departmental junior Michael Fallon won ‘Minister of the Year’ at the Spectator awards this year, one of the judges observed that he had ‘kneecapped Ed Davey’. In his interview on Today this morning, Davey went for Labour, and dodged suggestions that he and his party had lost out.

As James reported yesterday, there has been a fair amount of suspicion at the heart of the Coalition that the Lib Dems are briefing out lines from the negotiations ahead of time – and the last that happened, we ended up with the 2012 ‘omnishambles’ budget. So to counter this impression, expect a fair amount of emphasis on unity from Nick Clegg’s lot in the next few days as we head for the statement.