I have to say I’m feeling sad tonight. Two Summers ago, I worked hard to elect Tim Farron as our leader. I’d hoped he’d be there for one if not two Parliaments, at least a decade. I felt that the party needed his Tiggerish energy and passion even if his 100,000 members target scared me slightly.
Tim inspired us to pick ourselves up, raise our eyes and fight. He took on the fight for the most vulnerable, speaking up for the thousands of refugees fleeing war in Syria. He made it his mission to present a coherent case for unaccompanied children to come to this country, even trying to enact it into law. I was never prouder of him than when he was the first party leader to head to Calais and Lesvos.
Tim was not one to always make life easy for himself, as we saw from the Syria vote. He was prepared to risk upsetting his core support on the left of the party. Nor did he shy away from the battles we needed to have. On diversity, he was prepared to lead from the front, supporting the Electing Diverse MPs motion which was passed in York in 2016.
His leadership was a whirlwind of campaigning at all levels around the country. He went to Council by-elections to the winning Richmond Park parliamentary by-election. He was brilliant in the Scottish and Welsh elections last year.
He was proactive in the fight for LGBT equality, arguing for an end to the gay blood ban and for transgender rights. What a signal it sent to young people struggling with their gender identity to have a major political leader sitting in the front row supporting a motion on transgender rights.
And on that “sin” issue, I wrote the first time it came up that I didn’t think that politicians should be pontificating about any sort of sin:
Do we really think that it is appropriate for politicians to be expressing personal views on whether ANYTHING is a sin or not? If he’d given a direct answer, he’d have opened the floodgates to that line of questioning. “Mr Farron, is sex outside marriage a sin?” It could go as far as: “Mr Farron, see that Caron Lindsay, she’s a total heathen, will she burn in hell?” It would never end.
If he answered that either way, I think I’d be a bit livid. It’s not up to him to be making a value judgement on my heathen-ness, it’s up to him to protect my right to be as heathen as I like. And he will, because he’s a liberal, in the same way that he will always come down on the side of LGBT equality. LGBT people can be confident that Tim has their backs.
The recent election came too soon for us. It is difficult to see a scenario when we could have made a breakthrough. I’d have preferred us to have taken a stronger line on Brexit – a very clear “we will revoke Article 50” statement and I’d have taken the 20% of the vote that would most likely come our way if we had been like that. He maybe put too much emphasis on keeping everyone together but how much difference would it actually have made? I’m not convinced we’d have won that many more seats, given the nature of our electoral system. In any event, he increased us by 50% from 2015 and came within 500 votes of another 4 MPs. It’s about as good as we had hoped for.
You have to remember the context in which he was operating – an environment in which there was very little interest in giving the Liberal Democrats any exposure whatsoever, regardless of the uniqueness of our position on Brexit. At the Social Liberal Forum conference on Saturday, David Howarth showed us a slide which set out our appearances on Question Time – which had plummeted not just since 2015, but since 2010.
The fact that we are still here, still fighting on is at least in part due to Tim’s energy, passion and enthusiasm.
This is his last video as leader in which he sets out what he has achieved in these two eventful years.
He came along to Federal Board the other night and was optimistic and upbeat. His commitment to the party is as strong as ever it was. He said that he would still be around playing an active role as an MP. He knows that with only 12 MPs, they all have to pull their weight.
Cheers, Tim. You’ve done a great job and done us proud. I and so many other members are going to miss you as leader.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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17 Comments
I also feel a great sense of optimism for Vince Cable’s leadership as well though.
Of course, but tonight belongs to Tim.
Iagree with every word, Caron. I’m a newbie who came into the party entirely as a result of Tim Farron’s leadership. I feel utterly bereft and at a loss without him.
I wish i could say something positive about his replacement – but i just don’t feel it. Cable is an establishment figure who is strongly associated with the coalition years and who aseems to want to revive the bland centrism of Clegg. He has none of the energising urgency that Tim embodied, nor the cheeky, refreshing humour.
And there are a lot of unanswered questions as to why Mr Farron left in the first place. We badly need some clarity on this.
I agree with all of this. I supported Tim for leader for precisely the same reasons: at that moment we needed energy, passion, a natural campaigner; a gut Liberal with a good sense of humour. We got all of that with Tim, and we were lucky to have him. What you always knew with Tim was that he believed 100% in what he was doing, that he would listen and genuinely respect other points of view, and that he would work tirelessly for the cause. These are pretty good assets.
In policy terms, he had two really big calls to make: Syria and Brexit. In my view he got both right. I believe his call for a ‘vote on the final deal’ will grow in popularity as the shambles of Brexit unfolds. We’ll say, ‘Just like on Iraq, and the economic crash, Vince the sage is right again’. But it was Tim who laid the foundations.
All of that said, I have sadly concluded that he was right to stand down. He was certainly treated badly by the media over ‘sin-gate’ but lets face it he could have handled it better – and he knows this himself. I was frustrated by his performance in the election campaign. He didn’t play to his strengths – I think he is a great public speaker, so we should have had him speaking at big rallies, but instead we got too many TV studio debates and hostile interviews – which are his weaker areas. He worked hard, but by the end of the campaign it was clear he wasn’t happy.
I am still angry about the circumstances of his final resignation, and still want to know exactly what happened that day. But the bigger picture is that he was right to go. I think he has achieved a great deal, and you are right to say that everything needs to be seen in the context of where we were in the summer of 2015. We owe him a debt, and I suspect that affection and respect for him will grow after midnight tonight. He certainly deserves that.
All the best Tim. And thanks.
Having listened to Vince I do not see anything bland appearing. As far as student fees are concerned, a major problem from the coalition years, he shows signs of a radical proposal to move us forward. He is not without humour, we may be in for a surprise.
A good and decent man. Thank goodness he will still be around.
Edward, We’ll be fine with Vince. He has profile & will get us noticed.And he is far from bland.
Need to hold two seats today in Cumbria and Rutland. Could be difficult. Note we have not fought the Prescot seat, Greens are not opposed! I remember when we were an almost dominant force in that town. Ah memories. Those were the days. Will they ever come back?
Tim has been the Leader we needed. It is going to matter that we don’t squander the progress he oversaw. That enthusiasm was infectious.
I have seen Leaders I did not vote for making a reasonable fist of things. Rarely someone I strongly supported. Hope it happens again.
The election did teach us a bit more about some political commentators too. Just don’t forget.
I was very sad when Tim resigned, and I still am. It says more about us than him, that we could not support him sufficiently through that media nonsense.
He was handed the poisoned chalice of a party flat on its back after the 2015 election crash and has made a stunning success of turning that round and making us win again, we could have been wiped out in June this year.
To go from 40,000 to more than 100,000 members is an extraordinary achievement in 2 years and has transformed both our finances and resources on the ground for campaigning in the future. So I’m sad that he won’t be leading us to reap those rewards although I expect his family and constituents are pleased to have more of him, and he is young enough to come back as leader again in the future, personally I hope he does. We were very fortunate to have someone so good at such a bleak time in our history.
Politics is a messy business.
Tim has some great principles and capabilities, and he did two crucial things right. He did his best to put distance between himself and the disaster that was Coalition. He also made Brexit our issue and made a demand – the referendum on the deal – which will soon prove its importance. Theresa May cynically pre-empted that threat by calling an early election before the true folly of the Brexiteers could be made manifest. That made it easy to dismiss the referendum demand as sore-loserism.
When the interviewers made gay sex their lead topic in Tim’s early election interviews, I think most of us were just incredulous. Surely they should understand that to us, what Tim thought about gay sex was entirely peripheral to our campaign?
The answer, I fear, was “Don’t think about how you see your own campaign. Think about how the voters will see it.” The interviewers – to some extent rightly – saw us as a small and rather discredited party talking about boring things like voting systems and yet more re-voting. They looked for a topic that the public might actually find interesting. When they found that Tim wanted to evade questions about sex and religion, they realised that they had hit the jackpot.
That’s when we found out that the Achilles heel mattered. No good for us to complain that Tim’s voting record on gay rights was fine – That just wasn’t the point. You can’t have a leader who dithers, evades questions, and agonises about the conflict betwen personal and political belief. That’s a leader who won’t be able to make crucial decisions if elected to power. Sorry, but, choose a different leader. Well, we’re doing that now.
It is a tragedy for Tim, who deserved so much better. But he can’t blame anyone else for the Achilles heel.
I have been, and still am, very crtical of Tim farron becauseof his stance on Brexit! We turned our backs on the majority of the population who voted in favour of leaving the EU and paid the price for doing so!
We may not have agreed with the result, which I did not, but we are supposed to be Democrats! Have you noticed the clue in the name, Liberal democrats!!
Every candidate who stood in a NO vote area either lost the seat or struggled. My MP Norman Lamb only retained his seat because he is so popular as a local MP by supporters of all parties. He would have been easily beaten because of the UKIP Party not having a candidate, except for his local support!!
The Labour Party was in turmoil and we let them walk all over us! This is why no MP wants to really stand for the leadership.
Tim Farron is an honest hard working MP, who says a lot of good things, but the stance on the replay of the referendum did for us at the election, just as the tuition fees did for us in 2015!
I now support Norman LambMP in any way I can, but I can no longer support the Party, The same Party that I have supported and worked for since Paddy Ashdown stood for leader!
I am a democrat and hate it or not, I accept the result of an election! Why did the party, led by Tim Farron, refuse to do so?
Arthur Bailey
Lots of people have answered your point here, but in summary, a future referendum would be on what ACTUALLY could be negotiated versus continued membership, not some vague promise of future milk and honey fuelled by lies and distortions over many years. As we know, opinion is gradually moving in that direction as people see the limits of the possible, and the potential damage caused. Many analysts have written that our policy suffered principally from the fact that it was in advance of public opinion.
I see that even such a luminary analyst as Peter Kellner is suggesting that staying in the EU is becoming a reasonably likely outcome (something I have predicted since June 24th last year! Should have put money on it then!)
Tim13 I am afraid Arthur Bailey is right and you are wrong. Where I live in Bosworth constituency we finished a good second in 2010 with 33.3% of the vote we lost ground in both 2015 and in 2017 and now are third with 17.4% so our vote has almost halved. Or look at Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset a sea of Blue from the English to Bristol Channels. Whatever you think about leaving the EU the policy of calling for a second referendum has gained no traction nor is it likely to. About the only sensible thing Tony Blair said in his most recent intervention is that in order for there to be any chance of reversing the decision to leave the EU then the remain option cannot be the same one that was put to the country and rejected in 2016. If the EU really wanted the UK to remain a member then they should have offered substantial further reforms on freedom of movement and many other matters. Unless we change policy then we are going to be the party of the 0.48%.
The policy of having a vote on the deal IS gaining traction – look at the opinion polls. And I think this trend will continue as the nightmare reality of the deal becomes apparent. The problem is that people don’t associate the policy with us! So far we have failed to make that link in peoples minds. That’s precisely why Vince has to push it hard now.
As for ‘we must accept the will of the people,’ well I didn’t stop believing in PR when people voted against it in the 2011. I’ve never stopped campaigning for the LDs when the voters elect another party. And I’m not going to abandon my principles on Europe because a bunch of liars painted a lie on the side of a bus.
@Andrew Tampion – EU free movement had never been unconditional, despite the media and many politicians claiming so, but in fact requires people to meet certain conditions to be allowed to stay longer than 3 months. Successive UK governments never used the existing controls on free movement that other EU countries use. This is part of the reason David Cameron was unable to to get “further reforms on free movement”; the other reason was that he was unable to produce any evidence that free movement had a negative impact. I explain this in more detail in my blog here: http://rebeccataylormep.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/radical-idea-on-eu-free-movement-use.html
The wholesale acceptance of the narrative that free movement has had a negative impact* and that the UK was powerless to change it, is one of the biggest lies of the anti-EU brigade.
* I’m not claiming for one moment that free movement has no negative impacts on any person or place at all; there are some negative consequences, but they are infinitely fewer and less harmful than portrayed and most could have easily been managed, but weren’t.
Rebecca even if you are right to the maximum extent possible it is still politically impossible to offer the electorate a deal that has already been rejected. The failure to recognise this by Tim Farron and the Europhile wing of the party that did for us in the recent election as Arthur Bailey says. In any case freedom of movement isn’t the only issue. Look at our share of the vote. The Labour Party increased their share by 9.6 percentiles which is more than our entire vote. Even the Conservatives under Theresa May increased their vote share by 5.5 percentiles which is nearly as much as our entire vote share which fell.