Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey will speak out against the rise of Reform UK, insisting that “we cannot let Trump’s America become Farage’s Britain”.
The UK Lib Dem leader will argue his party has “proudly” led opposition to the US president in the UK.
But while he will tell his party’s Scottish conference in Edinburgh that the Liberal Democrats regard “Trump’s behaviour and beliefs with horror”, the Reform UK leader sees the US president as “an inspiration, a role model”.
Scottish leader Alex Cole-Hamilton told the party conference on Friday that the Liberal Democrats were the “antidote to Reform”.
And Sir Ed will also use his conference speech to attack Mr Farage and his party, drawing similarities between Mr Trump’s American administration and Reform UK.
Sir Ed will insist the Reform UK leader “sees Trump, not as a threat, not as a danger, but as an inspiration, a role model”.
Hitting out at the Reform leader, he will say both Mr Farage and his party “share Trump’s admiration for Vladimir Putin” and also “want to divide people, not bring people together”.
He will go on to claim that Mr Farage and Reform “look to Trump’s America, with private healthcare, loose gun laws and increasing authoritarian rule” and “want to bring all that to Scotland and the UK”.
While he will tell the conference that “we cannot let Trump’s America become Farage’s Britain” he will accuse rival parties of having played their part in the rise of Reform.
Labour, Tories and the SNP “have all, in their own ways, contributed to Farage’s rise,” he will say.
Sir Ed will claim that happened because the Conservatives “destroyed people’s trust in politics with the endless slew of scandals”.
And he will attack Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour for having “promised change” before adding that it “hasn’t turned out that way”.
As well as criticising the “mess Labour have created”, he will also turn on the SNP, who have been in power in Scotland since 2007.
But he will claim people and businesses in Scotland have been “doubly let down” as they have been affected by “failing Conservative and Labour governments in Westminster” as well as a “failed SNP government here in Holyrood”.
Sir Ed will tell his supporters: “The truth is, the SNP has been in government for far too long. Embroiled in their own series of scandals. And failing even to get the basics right.
“Letting people down, on the NHS, on social care, on education, on the economy and the environment, on the cost of living. And the ferries fiasco.”
