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1. He has been candid about his home life challenges

Not unlike his one-time colleague David Cameron, who opened up about his late son Ivan’s rare neurological disorder, Sir Ed has spoken about his son, John, now 15, who also suffers from a neurological condition and has “some profound learning difficulties”.

“We've been teaching him at home for a few years,” says Sir Ed, “it wasn't our first choice, but it turned out best for him. He was non-verbal before, and now he can verbalise quite a few things and express himself. He said ‘daddy’ for the first time when he was nine - that was a moment.”

2. Politics runs in his family

He admits that if the surprise 2017 election called by Theresa May hadn’t happened, things might have worked out differently for him. “But in 2017, I still definitely had the hunger, and I certainly have it now,” he says. A year later, Sir Ed's wife, who stood for parliament on several occasions, became a Kingston-upon-Thames borough councillor. While, clearly, there is an understanding of each other’s career ambitions, Sir Ed says, “where my family quite rightly impacted my decision-making was not running for the leadership in 2017.”

3. The role of carers is high on his list of priorities

Unsurprisingly, given his home life, the role of carers is something Sir Ed thinks about a lot. He and his wife are supported in their care of John by teachers and speech and language therapists. Recognising his comparatively fortunate situation, he observes that in households with diminished finances, “the impact on the family income to provide family care is ginormous, so if we can fix care, I think we can have a more equal society in many different ways.”

Better respite care and an improved carer’s allowance are two things he believes would improve the situation and he says that the economy would benefit overall “if we had more flexibilities for people who are working and caring.”

4. “I have fought Conservatives all my life.”

Despite the appearance of a “love-in”, as Nick Robinson puts it, Sir Ed says the Liberal Democrats were “fighting very hard behind the scenes” of the 2010-2015 coalition government.

One of the battle lines drawn was on expanding renewable energy. Sir Ed says that when he became Climate and Energy Secretary, David Cameron had told him that he could ditch everything that his predecessor, Chris Huhne, had started. “But I think we built on that. I worked with some Tory ministers who agreed with me, like Charles Hendry, and had help from Ed Miliband, and we made the reforms despite the opposition from George Osborne.”

When he wasn’t fighting the Conservatives in government, he was facing them down - mostly successfully - in his seat of Kingston and Surbiton in elections between 1997 and 2019, and notes, “I have fought Conservatives all my life.”

5. He won’t be re-using THAT Brexit slogan

Despite Sir Ed’s belief that “the real negatives of Brexit have proven that we [Liberal Democrats] were right”, the party’s one-time “Bollocks to Brexit” slogan wouldn’t resonate with the Lib Dem approach now. “Those were passionate days, weren't they?” says Sir Ed, “people wanted to be clear about where you stood on the issue, and no one can suggest we were sitting on the fence on the issue with that Anglo-Saxon terminology. When I think about that now, we do have to try and approach those sorts of issues in a way which doesn't increase the divisions in politics and tries to bring people together.”

6. The environment is back at the heart of the battle with the Conservatives

With recent changes made to the government’s green commitments by Rishi Sunak, who says he favours a more “pragmatic, proportionate and realistic” approach to reaching net zero by 2050, Sir Ed is almost back where he was when taking the fight to his Conservative counterparts over renewables. He frames the PM's changes to climate policies as disincentivising homegrown technological innovation and “essentially handing the future to China” and interprets the wider Conservative approach on the environment as inherently against the UK’s interests. “I think it's patriotic to care about our local environment, our rivers, the green and pleasant land that is the United Kingdom. The Conservatives seem to want to say, ‘don't worry about that’, and I think they're getting patriotism badly wrong.”

7. He believes the triple lock on pensions is about social justice

Despite concerns about cost, the Lib Dems have pledged to continue the triple lock that guarantees that pensions will not lose value in real terms and will, at least, rise with inflation.

“The people who benefit most from a decent state pension are women,” notes Sir Ed, “so what people are saying if they want to get rid of the triple lock, is not only do they think that Britain shouldn't pay our retired people as much as some countries that are poorer, but they want women who are retired to be amongst the poorest in our country. I reject that.”

8. He think liberals need to appeal to people’s emotions

Conceding that liberalism is “under attack” - an assault highlighted by the rise of far-right parties across Europe - Sir Ed maintains that “the vast majority of people actually have liberal values.”

Trying to win an argument through “rationality and evidence-based policy” is one thing, but for Sir Ed, it’s the expression of liberalism that is the issue. “The nationalists and the authoritarians are appealing to the emotions in people. If liberals don't appeal to the emotions, then we will fail. We will lose.”