Liberal Democrat MP Charlie Maynard has resigned from the party’s frontbench and wants to see Sir Ed Davey replaced as leader.
As first reported by the Financial Times, external, the Witney MP left his role as Treasury spokesman on Friday.
Those close to Sir Ed privately acknowledge that there is what they see as a “small group” of Liberal Democrat MPs who are not happy with his leadership, of which Maynard is one.
Daisy Cooper, the deputy leader of the party, said: “The vast majority of our MPs support Ed, want him to lead the party into the next election, and are furious at this distraction.” The BBC has approached Maynard for comment.
Lib Dem MP and former leader Tim Farron also defended Sir Ed, saying under his leadership the party was in a position to match or even beat the “record numbers of MPs” the party won at the last election.
“To think we’re helped by this kind of rubbish, you’d need to be smoking the kind of stuff even we aren’t in favour of legalising,” he quipped.
Several other Lib Dem MPs, including some frontbenchers, also gave Davey their backing in social media posts on Friday evening.
Julian Brazil, a Liberal Democrat council leader who has previously been critical of Sir Ed, said Maynard had “put his head above the parapet – we’ll see if other people follow”.
Speaking to BBC Radio 5Live’s Matt Chorley, he said: “I would have thought that in the next few days, we will see if there’s a groundswell behind him.”
Brazil added that Sir Ed had been a “fantastic leader” but added: “For whatever reasons people aren’t listening to Ed, they don’t take notice of him, so we need to have a fresh start and be able to articulate what our vision of the country is.
“I think that’s best done by someone else.”
Maynard was first elected to his Oxfordshire constituency in 2024, winning the traditionally Conservative seat, formerly held by David Cameron, with a majority of more than 4,000.
Before becoming an MP, he ran an international mergers and acquisitions advisory firm.
He is the second Lib Dem to leave the frontbench this week, following Alison Bennett’s decision to resign her post of spokesperson for care and carers.
Bennett would not confirmed why she stepped down but it is understood it was not for personal reasons.
Under Liberal Democrat rules, a leadership contest can be triggered if a vote of no confidence in the leader is passed by the majority of all the party’s MPs.
To enter a leadership contest, a Lib Dem MP must have nominations from at least 10% of the parliamentary party, not including the candidate themselves, and have the backing of 200 members across at least 20 local parties.
Sir Ed has been leader for six years and in the 2024 general election led the party to its biggest election success, winning 72 seats.
However, the party has found it difficult to build on that success, with polling numbers remaining at relatively low levels.
More recently, some Liberal Democrats have publicly attacked the leader for his stance on the triple lock – the mechanism which guarantees the state pension goes up each year in line with either inflation, wage increases, or 2.5% whichever is highest.
Last week, Sir Ed criticised Andy Burnham’s announcement that he would adjust the triple lock, arguing it would “put more pensioners into poverty”.
“This would mean people who are working hard now – the millennials – when they retire would have a very poor pension,” he said.
One Lib Dem MP described Sir Ed’s argument as “nonsense”, while another said: “Most millennials don’t think there will be a state pension when they retire so this isn’t being done with them in mind.”
