Roz Savage was elected as Lib Dem MP of the new South Cotswolds constituency at the 2024 general election (Alamy)
8 min read
Liberal Democrat MP Roz Savage speaks to Matilda Martin about why she became a record-breaking ocean rower, how the breakdown of her marriage liberated her, and why she would like to see Ed Davey’s party have a strategy for coalition
The idea of standing for Parliament first arose in conversation with environmentalist and then Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith, now a peer, while the pair were working to make the 2012 London Olympics free of plastic bags.
Roz Savage’s instinct was to dismiss it: “That’s an appalling idea. Why would anybody in their right mind want to do that?”
The conversations she went on to have with MPs to test the waters confirmed her suspicions. “I decided there was pretty much nothing about being an MP that I would enjoy. But, like I say, I’m not necessarily optimising for enjoyment,” the Liberal Democrat MP tells The House.
Asking herself whether she made the right decision in becoming an MP would be, she thinks now, a waste of time. She has long prioritised making herself useful over feeling comfortable.
Savage, 58, was a management consultant for almost 11 years before deciding that she had chosen the wrong path. Her epiphany was gradual.
To break a few rules, to do a few things that you shouldn’t do, was very liberating for me
The daughter of two Methodist preachers, she recalls growing up in a family with little money. She believes it was this that led her to buy into Thatcherism and go straight into an office job after she graduated from Oxford with a law degree in 1989.
“For the last six or seven years I was in that job, I wanted to do something that felt more purposeful, to feel like I was making the world a better place in some way.”
Savage sat down and wrote two versions of her own obituary – the one that she wanted and the one that she saw herself heading for. “Writing those two obituaries was the ‘holy crap’ moment of, ‘I’ve been just barking up the wrong tree about what I want to do with my life’.”
Savage’s marriage was breaking down at that time. “Up until that point, I’d been very conventional and even very conformist. I was a good girl and played by the rules, and I know my parents were very disappointed when my marriage ended. But to break a few rules, to do a few things that you shouldn’t do, was very liberating for me.”
This hunger for a change in direction culminated in Savage becoming the first woman to row solo across the world ‘s “Big Three” oceans: the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian. Her first ocean row was across the Atlantic, beginning in November 2005. The trip took 103 days.
Sitting in her Portcullis House office today, Savage reflects that 13 March will be the 20th anniversary of her arrival into Antigua.
Amusingly, Savage declares herself “not really an oceans person”, preferring the mountains and the forest. It was a trip to Peru that first inspired her love of nature. Why, then, did she choose to embark on a solo row across the Atlantic Ocean?
Being able to row is about one per cent of what it takes to row across an ocean
The idea, she recalls, came from a chance meeting with former Tory MP Dan Byles, who had rowed across the Atlantic with his mother in 1995. “When he was telling me about their Atlantic crossing, I just thought, ‘That sounds bloody miserable.’ I couldn’t really see why anybody would want to do it.”
But she tucked the idea away nonetheless and later decided – in the spirit of pushing herself out of her comfort zone – that this would be the perfect project to raise awareness about the environment.
She was not a stranger to the sport, having rowed at Oxford – an experience that was “enough to give me the delusion that this was something I had a chance at succeeding in”.
“But as it turns out, being able to row is about one per cent of what it takes to row across an ocean. It’s much more about seamanship and not going crazy – just not giving up.”
Though Byles advised her to wait, Savage embarked on her voyage across the Atlantic after just 14 months of training.
The row was far from straightforward: Savage had to contend with four broken oars, a broken stereo, broken camping stove, a broken satellite phone and tendonitis in her shoulders. This was also the year, 2005, of Hurricane Katrina and what Savage describes as “the stormiest year ever on the Atlantic”.
“At the time, I was just really pissed off. ‘Come on, Mother Nature, I’m out here as your champion and you’re just beating me up every single day!’” But she feels she learned more than she would have done otherwise and says the grumpiness has been traded in for gratitude.
Savage did not raise money for charity for the row: “I felt like the earth didn’t need our money. She needed our respect, so I was just doing it more to get the message out there.” She admits that it is difficult to measure her success in raising awareness but hopes she has added “my few grains of rice” to help tip the scales.
Savage does worry today about the tide turning against net-zero and climate change. “I suppose I have to be somewhat philosophical, that even if we do hit a Trump-sized or a Reform-sized road bump, there will then be a counter-reaction against that.”
After completing a doctorate and penning a book, the death of the late Queen in 2022 was what finally prompted Savage, inspired by Elizabeth II’s 70 years of service, to stand for Parliament. The decision was not taken lightly.
Rowing across the Atlantic was harder than becoming an MP, Savage reckons, but she draws parallels between the two.
“Once you’re out in the middle of an ocean, you very quickly pass the point of no return, a bit like being an MP,” she muses. “Once you’re there, you’re there, whether it’s because people have voted for you or because you’ve got winds and currents pushing you away from Africa and towards the Caribbean. And you’ve pretty much just got to hang on in there and figure out how you’re going to survive this experience without going crazy.”
“A lot of the work here, you just chip away at it, especially being in the third party. We often don’t get to set the agenda,” Savage says.
As Lib Dems, we really should have a strategy
Using another rowing metaphor, perhaps a hangover from her stint as a public speaker before joining Parliament, she adds: “Those incremental, almost imperceptible steps, just one oar stroke at a time, you just keep doing what you can to make a tiny bit of progress in the right direction, and hope that it is adding up to something.”
Savage chose to stand for the Lib Dems after reading three different manifestos – theirs, the Greens’ and Labour’s. “Spot the absentees,” she points out. Even now, Savage says she is “not political”. She rarely attends Prime Minister’s Questions in the Chamber, and one of her “big frustrations” is “tribalism” in Parliament.
Would Savage be open to a Lib Dem coalition with, say, Labour? “I know the official party line would be: no, we’re not even thinking about coalitions,” she replies.
But Savage’s personal view is different. “As Lib Dems, we really should have a strategy, because in the last 18 months, we’ve gone from being really a two-party system to being a four- or five-party system.”
The Lib Dems have been “badly burned by a coalition before”, she says, but ultimately they “need a plan” for this situation.
Since delivering a record-breaking 72 seats in summer 2024, leader Ed Davey has struggled to keep the faith of many of his MPs, who have many grumbles about the direction of the party, or its lack thereof.
Does Savage think Davey is the best leader for the Lib Dems? “I can’t say anything about that on the record,” Savage smiles, adding: “He delivered a fantastic result in 2024.” She adds: “He’s a very good and decent man.”
Who does she align with in the party? “I’m a green Lib Dem. I would say that I’m a bit more to the left of the party, although I don’t really like the left-right axis. I try and move away from that because I feel like liberalism is a bit of a different axis.”
She begins by naming a select few favourite colleagues before listing more and more.
“I’ve got a lot of respect for all of my colleagues, but some of us have got slightly different political views. Definitely, some have got more right-wing views than I do.”
On her arrival in the Commons, Savage was one of the lucky MPs to top the Private Members’ Bill ballot, and championed the Climate and Nature Bill. While she laments its fate as “kind of dead in the water” after the government’s “no”, she is positive that it inspired several commitments.
One was ratifying the global oceans treaty, a celebration of which Savage attended the night before our interview. She sports ombre blue acrylic nails to match.
While Savage left the ocean many years ago, are there any more rows on the horizon? “Oh, God, no,” she laughs. Are those oars hung up forever? “I think so.”
What does her obituary look like now? Is she happy with it? “If I was taken out tomorrow, I would feel like I have leaned into that fantasy version.”
