Last Friday, February 2, 2024, I wrote about Sir Ed Davey’s involvement in the Post Office Horizon scandal when he was minister for the organisation during the Coalition government.

His tenure was from May 2010 to February 2012.

My post explained his initial reluctance to meet with Horizon whistleblower Alan Bates, who successfully mobilised subpostmasters from around the United Kingdom to fight this injustice of unsafe criminal convictions, lost family savings, health problems and broken relationships. Davey did meet with Mr Bates in October 2010 but in December that year, backed off from further involvement ‘as I made clear at the meeting’. Davey claimed that the reason was that a court decision was due and that he could not comment. Fair enough.

However, Davey then went on to work for a law firm that fought against the cases of subpostmasters accused of false accounting in their shortfalls from the Horizon system. This position, a second job for the Liberal Democrat MP, earned him a tidy £275,000, according to the Daily Mail‘s Andrew Pierce.

Bates meeting ‘presentational’

A shocking revelation came to light from the BBC on Wednesday, February 7, 2024, which states that Davey was encouraged to meet with Alan Bates for ‘presentational reasons’ (purple emphases mine, bold here in the original):

Sir Ed Davey was advised as postal minister in 2010 to meet Post Office campaigner Alan Bates to avoid bad publicity over the Horizon scandal, the BBC has discovered …

Documents show he was advised to meet Mr Bates for “presentational reasons”.

Officials at the business department, which is responsible for the Post Office, warned about possible headlines such as “government minister refusing to meet victims”.

Davey denies that:

However, Sir Ed told the BBC’s Today programme it “wasn’t the case” that he had agreed to meet Mr Bates because of potential bad publicity.

“That’s what the officials put in the submission to me just before the meeting, but I wanted to meet him because after his second letter, I felt I should hear his concerns,” he said.

Sir Ed said he was the first minister to meet Mr Bates and added he took his concerns “very seriously”. “When I put those concerns to the Post Office, concerns about the Horizon IT system, I’m afraid I was lied to,” he said.

Sanctimonious Sir Ed, one of the biggest hypocrites in the House of Commons, must gauge whether he has questions to answer on this during a general election campaign this year:

With a general election coming up, Sir Ed said he had not considered stepping down as Liberal Democrat leader.

“When I go out there campaigning, we’re finding incredible results in seats that only we can beat the Conservatives in,” he said. “The party is very keen for us to fight this election really hard under my leadership.”

I now will finish on what happened to Ed Davey in January 2024.

Ed goes missing

When Parliament reconvened in early January after Christmas recess, the nation was outraged by what they saw in the four-part ITV docudrama, Mr Bates versus The Post Office.

A December 29, 2023 review in The Times said it was ‘the TV drama that will have you fuming’:

… There is so much drama in the series’s hour-long episodes that each contains up to 90 scenes. Hughes [scriptwriter Gwyneth Hughes (Five Days, Honour, Vanity Fair)] admits the scripting process was hard: the tale’s complexity; its jargon; the computer talk; and the numbers of people involved. She at least had resort to skills acquired during her early days as a reporter on the Sheffield Morning Telegraph. “I have an old journalistic approach. A lot of people working in this arena [drama-documentary] play quite fast and loose with the facts, but I try really hard not to do that”…

One thing was not difficult, however. Although the sub-postmasters’ struggle continues and their story lacks a definitive denouement, Hughes knew how her series must conclude.

“I’ve known from the beginning how I thought I would end it. I knew it would have to end in the middle, because the story wouldn’t be over when the series came out. So it ends with two things. One is the big victory on the steps of the Royal Courts of Justice [in April 2021], where [39] criminal convictions were overturned. And then, after that, we go back to Alan in his house. And he’s still working, working for justice.”

On January 10, the Liberal Democrats were keen to present Davey as a victim.

Guido Fawkes has their statement and more (red emphases his). Ex-postmistress Sally Stringer appears again in the news item following this one:

Apart from [Conservative MP] Lee Anderson saying Ed Davey “should start by clearing his desk, clearing his diary, and clear off” at PMQs, ex-postmistress Sally Stringer has called for the LibDem leader to resign on BBC Radio 5 Live today. She says she has a letter from Davey in which he says he was “fully aware” of what was going on in the Post Office while minister. Speaking to LibDem Wendy Chamberlain MP, who claimed Davey was “lied to” about the goings on by officials after asking questions in 2010, Stringer claimed that Davey was well-informed of the scandal’s details. She went on to say, “So either he is not telling the truth, or he is stupid.” The BBC’s Nicky Campbell made a rare sound comment: “If Ed Davey wasn’t Ed Davey, Ed Davey would be calling for Ed Davey to resign”…

Meanwhile, the LibDems have been sending out emails painting Davey as a victim in the scandal, blasting the Tories’ “personal attacks“, “misrepresent[ation]” and “scapegoat[ing]” of Sir Ed. Deputy LibDem leader Daisy Cooper has put an article in her local paper expressing her “full support” for the victim of Tories who are “manufacturing political attacks“. Guido doesn’t have to think twice about who the real victims are…

The Lib Dems are standing by their man. The letter is long, but it’s worth noting this about Sir Ed’s victimhood:

… You may have seen stories scapegoating Ed in relation to the longstanding Post Office scandal. Ed was postal affairs minister for 20 months in the context of 20 years when the Post Office denied the claims of the victims; his understandable response was to believe the claims were inaccurate.  

The true picture only finally started to emerge through the sub-postmasters’ court cases years later and from that moment on Ed played an active role in campaigning for a full statutory inquiry to get justice for the victims (unlike Conservative ministers who refused). 

Really?

The letter continues:

Even at the beginning of  the scandal Ed did meet with activist Alan Bates (contrary to press implications) and was the first minister on record to do so seven years after Bates first raised concerns with Labour ministers in 2003. 

The Party is working to counteract the misrepresentation of Ed who has already said that he deeply regrets not realising that the Post Office was lying to him and other ministers.  We expect the Conservatives to scapegoat and attack Lib Dems in a number of misleading ways in the coming election campaign, given their difficult electoral position, and we are preparing for further attacks. 

There is more information about the Horizon case here, please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any points to make or questions about this dreadful miscarriage of justice …

That evening, a Telegraph article appeared saying that a former subpostmistress is considering running against Sir Ed in this year’s general election. More to follow about her later on below:

Sir Ed Davey is facing an election challenge from a former postmistress amid warnings that his role in the Post Office scandal will cost him vital votes.

Residents in the Liberal Democrat leader’s seat are planning to stand an independent candidate against him over his handling of the Horizon fiasco during his time as Post Office minister in 2010-12.

They are in talks about putting up Yvonne Tracey, a local independent councillor who was the deputy manager of a Post Office branch, at the next general election.

Sir Ed lost his Kingston and Surbiton [Surrey, south London] seat to the Tories as recently as 2015, and a rival campaign could eat into the majority of 10,000 he had when he won it back in 2017.

Cllr James Giles, the leader of the Kingston Independent Residents Group, said voters were bringing up Sir Ed’s role in the Post Office scandal on the doorstep.

“Discussions are ongoing about standing a former postmaster against Ed at the next election as an independent,” he told The Telegraph.

Cllr Tracey, a fellow independent on Kingston council, posted on social media: “Come the next election, it’s incumbent on those seeking justice for our sub-postmasters to stand against Ed.”

The revelation came as the political clamour for Sir Ed to stand down as party leader and hand back his knighthood intensified on Wednesday.

The article talks about ex-postmistress Sally Stringer, mentioned in Guido’s post above:

Sally Stringer, a former postmistress in Gloucestershire, said she had a letter which proved he was “fully aware” of the Horizon scandal when he had ministerial responsibility for the Post Office.

“I don’t think he is fit to hold the position of running a party in this country due to the fact that he is completely complicit with the problems at the Post Office from 2010 onwards on his watch,” Ms Stringer told the BBC.

“I’ve got a letter from Ed Davey to my ex-MP down in Worcestershire, where he is fully aware of what is going on, to quote, in the Post Office because he put it in writing.

“So either he is not telling the truth or he is stupid. It’s an election year and this issue is not going to go away across the board.”

Sathyan Shiju, a former postmaster in Sir Ed’s constituency, said he had contacted the MP three times over his problems with Horizon but never heard back.

He revealed he tried to contact Sir Ed after the software showed he had a shortfall which by 2006 had grown to more than £20,000.

“He refused to talk to me, I had no chance to talk to him,” he told LBC. “I wish I could say my MP had a chat with me, and that he tried, but he didn’t. He just completely ignored me.

“I was going through my worst nightmare and I was looking for someone to talk to, and somebody to believe me. Ed Davey should have talked to me.”

A Liberal Democrat spokesman said they didn’t have “any record” of the contact and that “Ed will be reaching out to Mr Shiju to find out exactly what happened” …

Lib Dem chief whip Wendy Chamberlain leapt to her leader’s defence:

“He did ask questions and he was lied to on an industrial scale,” she said, adding that Sir Ed had “expressed extreme regret” over what happened.

“I appreciate the visceral anger that is here and the need to call people to account. I believe the public inquiry will do that and I know that Ed will take part and answer any questions,” she said.

That night in The Sun, veteran columnist Rod Liddle asked who looks after ‘the powerless and the moneyless’. He included Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer:

… More than 700 sub-postmasters and mistresses had their lives destroyed because the bigwigs in the Post Office, in government and in the Crown Prosecution Service believed in something which was beyond the bounds of probability.

A new computer system was introduced.

And, overnight the Post Office “discovered” that hundreds of its employees — the people who provide a vital service for our towns and villages — were robbing them blind.

They, and the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] and government, didn’t stop to think: Um, that’s a bit unlikely, isn’t it? Might it not be the computer software that’s at fault?

And when this suggestion was put to them, they dismissed it out of hand.

Nah, bang ’em up …

… there’s Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey.

God only knows why he was knighted.

But anyway, he was the postal affairs minister between 2010 and 2012.

He refused a meeting with sub-postmaster and campaigner Alan Bates, saying it wouldn’t achieve anything.

He sided with the Post Office bosses, being too lazy or thick to recognise the sheer ridiculousness of the scenario they were putting forward.

Davey is famous for one thing.

Demanding people must resign.

He does it all the time.

So why hasn’t he resigned as party leader?

Why hasn’t he handed back his knighthood?

He says he has no intention of doing either.

He is a hypocrite.

He is partly responsible for the miscarriage of justice.

He should apologise and stand down.

But then there’s another party leader.

Another bloke who has been knighted.

That’s Sir Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party.

Right at the heart of the crisis, Sir Keir was the Director of Public Prosecutions between 2008 and 2013.

Was he not sufficiently interested in discovering why so many Post Office employees were suddenly being brought before the courts?

Did the champion of the ordinary man not have one or two doubts about these mass prosecutions?

Nope, apparently not — and ever more prosecutions went ahead.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of Tory politicians, too, who need to hold their hands up.

But Davey and Starmer are purportedly politicians who are there specifically to look after the powerless and the moneyless.

They conspicuously failed to do that.

And yet neither one of them is likely to face consequences.

It’s always the poor who face consequences.

Some things in this country never change.

The pressure seemed to be getting to Sir Ed, because he took a rather long absence from the House of Commons. Luckily for him, unlike Sir Keir, he doesn’t have to turn up at the despatch box to spar with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesdays.

On January 12, Guido asked, ‘Where’s Ed Davey Gone?’

Guido told us:

That afternoon, the Manchester Evening News gave us the answer for his January 12 absence. He was visiting a school in Stockport:

Sir Ed Davey has refused to apologise to victims of the Post Office scandal from Greater Manchester.

The Lib Dem leader has come under fire after it was revealed that while serving as postal affairs minister he initially refused to meet former sub-postmaster Alan Bates, a campaigner who fought for justice for the people impacted. Sir Ed held the role between 2010 to 2012 in the Lib Dem-Tory coalition government …

Among the victims are residents of Greater Manchester such as Mohammed Rasul from Salford, who told BBC Breakfast earlier this month that he was falsely convicted and missed seeing his father die because he couldn’t leave his home due to a curfew.

During a visit to a primary school in Stockport today, the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) asked Sir Ed if he would apologise to the victims in this region.

He said: “My heart goes out to those sub-postmasters, hundreds of them who were treated so badly by the Post Office. I have a postmaster in my own constituency who came to me just two years ago who was prosecuted back in 2009.

“He served 16 months in prison for something he didn’t do, he was bullied by the Post Office to say he was guilty when he wasn’t, and what I’ve noticed and I’m sure that many other ministers who had this responsibility over 20 years – Labour, Conservative and others – probably feel like I do. We regret that we were lied to by the Post Office on an industrial scale, and I think the inquiry is showing how appallingly the Post Office behaved and how Fujitsu their contractor behaved.”

The Lib Dem party leader added: “I wish I knew then what we all know now and I regret that the Post Office engaged in a conspiracy of lies to the victims, the hundreds of sub-postmasters, to the judges and the courts, ministers of all parties, and to the British public over two decades. It is a national scandal and I hope the inquiry can get to the bottom of it” …

Sir Ed was knighted in the 2016 in the New Year’s honours list for “political and public service” …

He also gave an interview to ITV News that day, possibly in Stockport, although it is unclear.

Guido has the video and the story. I could only stomach half the video, in which the interviewer asked him ten times to apologise, yet the knight of the realm refused to do so.

What an oleaginous delivery, peppered with many ‘of courses’. I don’t believe this man one iota:

Guido says:

On Saturday, January 13, The Guardian reported that Sir Ed’s approval ratings were tanking:

Lib Dem leader Ed Davey has seen his personal popularity take a significant hit in the wake of the Post Office scandal, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer [the paper’s Sunday edition] …

Davey’s personal ratings – the difference between those who think he is doing a good or bad job – have fallen from -4% to -13% in the most recent poll. Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak’s approval ratings have remained broadly stable since before Christmas. Starmer leads Sunak by 30% to 22% on who voters regard as the best prime minister.

Adam Drummond, head of political and social research at Opinium, said: “At the top level, not much has changed since before Christmas. Labour still leads by double digits, Keir Starmer’s approval rating isn’t brilliant but Rishi Sunak’s is awful. However, the most noticed story by far was the Post Office scandal and this is behind the drop in Ed Davey’s approval rating.

“The Lib Dems will be worried that the first time their leader has cut through to voters is for his connection to a huge scandal. But, while Labour and the Tories may be relieved that fingers aren’t being pointed at them, they and the rest of us should be concerned if important questions about how national institutions operate devolve into yet another edition of ‘which politician you’ve never heard of is going to resign?’”

Another poll appeared at the end of the month, more about which below.

On January 14, The Sunday Times confirmed that the former postmistress-turned-councillor, Yvonne Tracey, is indeed going to run for election to Parliament, ‘Mrs Tracey vs Ed Davey: the postmistress coming for his seat’:

After 25 years as a deputy postmistress in the southwest London suburb where she has lived her entire life, Yvonne Tracey should be enjoying her retirement. But a decade on from helping run the shop on New Malden’s high street, she is still known by many in the area as “Mrs Post Office”.

“I was very proud to work for the Post Office,” the 68-year-old said. “It used to have such a good reputation and it was trusted by the public. That will never be the case again.” Swept up by the same anger felt by the rest of the country since the broadcast of the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office — “I couldn’t sleep after watching” — ­Tracey felt compelled to act.

But she is going further than most. Tracey has announced that she will stand against her local MP, the Liberal Democrat leader and former postal affairs minister Sir Ed Davey, for his Kingston & Surbiton seat at the next general election.

“I worked for the Post Office for 25 years. I’ve used the Horizon system,” she says. “I just think I’ve got to stand up for these people. If I can do anything to help in a small way, I’ve got to do it.”

As a postmistress from 1989 until 2013, the former Conservative voter had a limited interest in politics — let alone ambitions to become an MP.

But since being elected as an independent councillor for the borough of Kingston last year to raise awareness of problems affecting the “little people” — largely the problem of a New Malden cycle lane imposed by the majority Liberal Democrat council — she intends to stand up for those same people again. “Albeit, on a much larger scale,” she admitted, in her first newspaper interview …

On Friday, Davey refused to apologise when he was asked ten times by ITV News to say sorry, instead insisting he had faced a “conspiracy of lies” from Post Office bosses and it was “impossible to uncover them”.

Tracey, a grandmother of five and great-grandmother of one, was incensed. “It’s all well and good Davey saying he was lied to, but if he was lied to I want to know: What questions did he ask at the time; what answers were given to him that made him think this Horizon system was infallible and hundreds and hundreds of postmasters and postmistresses had suddenly decided to steal thousands and thousands of pounds from the Post Office,” she said.

“Most importantly, I want to know who told him these replies. We’ve got to name and shame people. It’s no good saying, ‘I was lied to’. That’s too broad. Let’s have some facts here, these people deserve it.”

Tracey is standing solely on the issue of the scandal. On Friday, she registered her ballot, as part of the Kingston Independent Residents Group, on a “justice for sub-postmasters” ticket …

Go, Yvonne! This is going to be a great local campaign.

Also that day, The Telegraph‘s veteran columnist Simon Heffer wrote, ‘Ed Davey is a toxic liability even to the feckless Lib Dems’, which is a great follow-on to Yvonne Tracey:

Do you remember how things used to be when Conservative ministers appeared responsible for even the smallest misdemeanour? Sir Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, would fight his way on to any television or radio show that would have him (or explode over social media like a demented teenager), baying for that minister’s resignation.

It may be a while before we hear such self-righteous claptrap again. Sir Ed now sits at the political heart of the most shocking scandal of our time: the Post Office’s branding of hundreds of its employees as thieves, and wrecking their lives, to conceal the failures of the useless computer system it chose to operate. When matters in this slow-burning atrocity continued to be dire – from 2010 to 2012 – Sir Ed was minister in charge of the Post Office …

Sir Ed claims he was lied to “on an industrial scale” by the Post Office. That may well be true.

But did he investigate why this institution was having so much trouble? Did he ask the right questions about what he was told – the detailed questions those who understand the true nature of responsibility must always ask, whether running a village post office or part of a department of state? Apparently not.

This may be because of stupidity; and indeed the way Sir Ed has comported himself in recent days suggests that he might indeed be utterly obtuse. He refused ten times in an ITV interview on Friday to apologise for his obvious dereliction as a minister. Or, it may be down to breathtaking arrogance: Sir Ed acts blithely as if he were beyond reproach and born to rule. God help the ruled …

It is no surprise that Sir Ed behaved like this, and continues to do so. Those who have had a Liberal Democrat-controlled council inflicted on them know that is how the party works: they crave power, but haven’t a clue how to exercise it properly if they get it.

Around Britain’s local government today, there are numerous Lib Dems, posing and posturing and making a shambles of everything they touch, but regarding the problems they create as somebody else’s mess to clear up. Sir Ed’s own notions of the constitutional role of ministers wouldn’t even get him a politics GCSE.

His grotesque apparent failures may have taken place years ago, but their toxic legacy persists. His cowardice, evasiveness and idiocy remain rampant. He is a liability his already inadequate party hardly needs. In an election year, he is their dose of arsenic. Sadly for them, he appears to be too thick or arrogant to see that either.

On Monday, the London Evening Standard had this damning front page of Sir Ed with the headline ‘Sir Hypocrite’:

I hope that some of the commuters of Kingston and Surbiton saw it in their travels.

Two weeks later, Ipsos issued its first political poll of 2024. On January 30, Guido posted the dramatic results for the Lib Dems, ‘Half of Lib Dem support wiped out in poll’:

It would be armageddon for the LibDems if almost half of their total support was wiped out. It looks like they are suffering the consequences of Ed Davey’s abysmal performance dodging accountability in the wake of the Post Office ITV documentary …

48% of people say they have definitely decided who to vote for ...

Sir Ed reappears

It wasn’t until Wednesday, January 31, when Sir Ed reappeared in Parliament — and to great commotion, one must say.

This is what happened at PMQs that lunchtime when he stood up to speak:

Mr Speaker—[Interruption.]

The interruption is the commotion from the other MPs at his presence.

Sir Lindsay Hoyle, Speaker of the House, had to calm them down:

Order! Ed Davey.

Davey presented his question to Rishi Sunak:

My constituent Millie, a wheelchair user, had a serious accident at a sporting event. Millie was left waiting on the floor in pain for over two hours before an ambulance arrived. During her months in hospital since then, she has been dropped, badly, multiple times; left stuck in her bed for days on end; and even told to soil herself when there is no one to take her to the toilet. Before all this, Millie was living independently and working, but the prospect of her returning to work is being destroyed by the crisis in the NHS and care system. I am sure the Prime Minister will agree that no one should ever have to go through what Millie has been through, so will he look again at our proposals to ensure that every patient receives the high-quality care that they need?

It’s a dreadful NHS anecdote.

Rishi replied:

I am very sorry to hear about Millie’s case, and I am sure that if there are specific aspects of it that need to be examined, the Health Secretary will follow them up with the right hon. Gentleman. More generally, we want to make sure that everyone gets the care they deserve, which is why we are not just investing record sums in the NHS but ensuring that there are record numbers of doctors, nurses and new, innovative forms of treatment such as surgical hubs and virtual wards. All that is showing that ambulance times, which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned, are lower today than they were this time last year.

However, Guido’s political sketch diarist Simon Carr, another veteran journalist, had this take on Sir Ed’s question which, to Carr, smacked of political opportunism:

Ed Davey, the missing Liberal Democrat … is a great favourite of the Commons. He rose to the biggest cheer of his career (“Resign!”). The Speaker hushed the House but as soon as Davey rose again, so did the shouting. Everyone was very happy; with the partial exception of Ed Davey.

He gave us the harrowing story of an old woman mistreated by the NHS to the extent of staff telling her “to soil herself” rather than helping her to the WC. That he wanted to pin this as a Tory funding failure is a mark of how out of touch he is with forward thinking on the Left. The NHS has wrongfully killed more people than Hamas and it is starting to be noticed.

Yes, and here’s another example of Sir Ed Davey’s grandstanding:

I couldn’t agree more.

What will it take for him to support the subpostmasters in the Horizon scandal? Furthermore, how long will it take?

Next week, I will have more on politicians — good and bad — involved with the Horizon scandal.