Tim Farron has made his first public comments since our Brexit result was confirmed. He said:
I am devastated and I am angry. Today we wake to a deeply divided country.
Nigel Farage’s vision for Britain has won this vote, but it is not a vision I share.
Young people voted to remain by a considerable margin, but were out voted. They were voting for their future, yet it has been taken from them.
Even though the result was close, there is no doubt that the majority of British people want us to leave.
Our fight for an open, optimistic, hopeful, diverse and tolerant Britain is needed now more than ever.
Together we can still make the case for Britain’s future with Europe, as millions of people voted for it. Together we cannot afford to let that vision to die.
This self-inflicted wound will be Cameron’s legacy. This is his failing. And when the call went out to Jeremy Corbyn, he refused to answer. Their self-interested political maneuvering has taken our country to the brink, and we are toppling over the edge.
The Prime Minister must now act quickly to steady the economy, reassure the markets, and immediately set a new course. If he cannot do this immediately, there is no possible way he can remain in office.
The Liberal Democrats will continue to stand and fight for a better kind of Britain than the one painted by the leave campaign – tolerant, openhearted, optimistic and outward looking. If you are as angry and heartbroken as I am, I need you to join us today.
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65 Comments
“And when the call went out to Jeremy Corbyn, he refused to answer.”
What? Corbyn has tried hard enough, and can’t be blamed for the fact that the media ignored him much of the time (which is strange because most of the time the media likes to talk about him as much as possible!).
Corbyn single-handedly determined my vote, by talking about worker’s rights at a time when I was wavering towards Leave, and other politicians were not much interested. Moreover, unlike some politicians I could mention, Corbyn was capable of putting up a robust defence for the benefits of immigration without resorting to insulting and alienating people. His interview on Marr last week was a demonstration of how this should be done.
Oh Tim! Those of us who have known the EU since 1973 had had enough. Voting out does not make us intolerant or inward looking. You will have to get used to our choice, or you will consign the party to oblivion.
As I said a few months ago: libertarianism is as dead as a dodo. People want sensible immigration controls and to tackle the powerful. Lib Dems only focus on tackling the powerful and sometimes even go too far in that direction.
Tim Farron saying he’s angry with the public won’t help, or Cameron for giving the public a say, but there you go. At least Tim accepts the result and clearly wants to make Britain succeed regardless.
I am afraid it is the UK that will be consigned to oblivion. The political impact of this vote may well break it apart with Scotland going its own way and a question mark over Northern Ireland.
BBC : London is waking up and finding itself irrelevant.
Wrong reaction. Keep calm. Make a positive reaction. Campaign immediately for EEA. Always the Liberal option.
Tim Farron
Nigel Farage’s vision for Britain has won this vote, but it is not a vision I share.
People have voted for liberal democracy: a future where they will be in control over their own lives, where they will live in a country governed by their interests.
Unfortunately, Brexit won’t deliver it. They have been conned rotten by the Brexiteers. The lack of control that is making people feel so miserable is most definitely not due to EU membership.
Negotiations will start for Britain to have some kind of associate
status with the EU, not quiet the same as Norway.
So there we have it – the culmination of Nick Clegg’s total failure in coalition. Up to 2010, we had built a vote on being a reforming party which stood for ordinary people, based on sensible policies, but particularly on the need for real reform of many areas of government. However, in five years he had turned us from a party of hope for the future, into a party whose leaders looked happy simply to be part of the establishment.
As a result, many of those who supported us and wanted change looked elsewhere for that change. In Scotland it was mainly the SNP, in England our vote went everywhere, but a significant proportion went to UKIP and eurosceptic Conservative and the consequences are now clear.
We were the glue that held the country together with hope and a real promise of change and a better form of politics. We must return to that open, diverse and honest political approach, where people with serious concerns could see them being taken seriously and addressed.
… and we have to do it quickly.
We must have a quick general election. And the LibDem manifesto should promise to overturn the referendum vote (and no more referendums, ever)
@Stuart
“And when the call went out to Jeremy Corbyn, he refused to answer.”
What? Corbyn has tried hard enough
As Corbyn is a waste of space, I suppose by his own standards he has “tried hard enough”. It’s just that Leadership isn’t really his thing.
All those Labour Party members who (apparently) backed him – at least until yesterday – must now be kicking themselves.
One of the successes of the coalition was the fixed term parliaments act. So unless 2/3 or possible 3/4 of MPs vote for an election or a vote of no confidence succeeds with no alternative government being formed the next election will be in 2020. A quick election is simply not possible.
Simon Shaw 24th Jun ’16 – 7:52am………..As Corbyn is a waste of space, I suppose by his own standards he has “tried hard enough”. It’s just that Leadership isn’t really his thing…..
All those Labour Party members who (apparently) backed him – at least until yesterday – must now be kicking themselves…..
I expected this from you; and was not disappointed… There was I believing that, in this, Corbyn was speaking OUR language…”The EU is not perfect but it is in our interest to ‘Remain’, warts and all”…
I don’t think it will take long for significant numbers of leave voters to realise that they were sold a pup. The nebulous benefits that the leave campaign appeared to promise, but oh-so-carefully didn’t (“we could spend this money on the NHS”, “we will be able to control immigration”, all without any shred of commitment, which in any case was not theirs to offer) will evaporate as the economic meltdown hits us all in our wallets.
Negotiations with the EU will inevitably see UK on the back foot, and unable to participate in the single market without agreeing to freedom of movement.
Politicians’ favourite answers like “let’s have an election” will cut no ice. Experts saying “we told you so” will only make people more angry.
@Simon Shaw
Corbyn is doing a lot better than you predicted. Didn’t you say Labour’s poll ratings would nosedive aftera brief Corbyn honeymon period? The opposite has happened – Labour’s ratings are better now than they were in the months after he took over.
On the contrary, Simon Shaw is too kind to Corbyn.
The only highlight for me of a miserable evening was my nine year-old seeing Paddy on TV and asking if he was Lloyd George.
I like Tim.
But the reality is this has little to do with Corbyn. If you want to blame anyone look at the Conservative party. This is Cameron’s folly as probably the last elected PM of the UK.
@Glenn. I agree. Please do not blame Jeremy Corbyn. He never asked for this referendum to take place. He has to reflect labour grassroots opinion which was obviously vey eurosceptic. The EU has become a neo-liberal economic institution which despite its environmental and workers rights benefits is not easy for the labour party to emthuse about.
So now Cameron has cut and run. The markets will have a field day.
@Christopher Haigh
“Please do not blame Jeremy Corbyn. He never asked for this referendum to take place. He has to reflect labour grassroots opinion which was obviously vey eurosceptic.”
Rubbish! Corbyn was clearly representing his own views over that of Labour Party members or Labour Party MPs, both of which groups were very far from Eurosceptic.
Corbyn should do the decent thing, but I suspect he wont.
A lot of us have had enough. For years I have complained about the legal system. Just because you feel that your party likes things, its not purely your choice.
I look forward, not back.
Lib Dems have to take their share of blame.
The party’s 5 years in Coalition fuelled the electorate’s cynicism of politicians and the establishment. Nick Clegg’s contribution in the debate against Farage was at best unhelpful. Lib Dems actively supported a terrible Remain campaign that probably created more Exit votes than it saved. Even on this “Liberal” site the debate was largely ad hominem abuse of Boris Johnson et al (which at least made a refreshing temporary break from the personal attacks on Corbyn), doom-mongering about the situation in which we now find ourselves, and the shutting down of discussions about immigration. Much like the way Lib Dems ignored for 5+ years the evidence of election results and polling, and dismissed out-of-hand concerns and counter-views about the party’s own position, as “the party of In” it has been part of a campaign that has taken the same blinkered approach to EU membership.
Maybe Corbyn’s more measured line is one that Lib Dems (and other pro-EU campaigners) should have adopted. Perhaps they have let him down. It’s certainly a bit rich to blame his party after 6 years of “Labour crashed the economy” and a year of attacking them for being socialist anti-semites.
Thanks to a depressingly negative Bremain campaign, my eventual decision to vote Remain anyway was wasted.
Thanks to my belief that polling hid many shy Brexiters because of that intolerant Bremain campaign, the first bet I have ever placed on anything in my life (£100 at 3/1) has softened the blow. Silver linings, I suppose.
P.S. In my last post, when I refer to “Lib Dems”, obviously I am aware that not all Lib Dems share the same views (that would make this a very dull site!), but the party does look (and present itself as) more homogeneous than its members might want to believe.
“Keep calm. Make a positive reaction. Campaign immediately for EEA.”
Agreed, Bill.
When MPs don’t listen, this is what happens. The ballot box is the answer.
I can assure when I visited the then MP of Bath Don Foster, and Graham Watson for many years on the failings of Brussels 11a, writing, asking even going to Brussels, still it did not work.
Well Don, I lost a lot of ground on my legal issue, but this is a pay back.
Did the Lib Dems try hard enough? I live in an area with strong Liberal traditions and a Lib Dem MP up until the last election.
Did I see remain canvassers from the Lib Dems or even a few Remain hordings out in the fields where Lib Dem hordings woukd be at election time? No, nothing, zip – no real evidence of local campaigning on the ground.
The progressive parties all failed to win the argument or even to be heard to any extent. It was all about Cameron verses Gove and Boris with Farage there for comic effect.
There must be a coherent, positive and progressive case put forward to the electorate at the next election or the 1980s will be repeated with bells on.
@Peter Watson
“Maybe Corbyn’s more measured line is one that Lib Dems (and other pro-EU campaigners) should have adopted. Perhaps they have let him down. It’s certainly a bit rich to blame his party after 6 years of “Labour crashed the economy” and a year of attacking them for being socialist anti-semites.”
You are missing the point that Corbyn has let his own party and his own members down by his own abject failure in leadership on this issue.
And when you say “Labour crashed the economy” that’s not really been the accusation, has it? It’s that Labour were very good at spending money as if they really believed Brown’s “No more boom and bust” claim.
As to “being socialist anti-semites”, plainly some of them are socialist or even worse, and their own Anti-Semitism Inquiry is clearly necessary.
So yes, we shouldn’t particularly blame the Labour Party, we should blame Corbyn personally.
.
@ Peter Watson
Correct Peter, we are partly to blame starting with Clegg. As for the campaign. Some of our leaders were good Caroline Pidgeon in London stood out (No wonder London did well, with the new Mayor and a bad experience of Boris). Tim made some good speeches, but as with his comment today it leaves you wondering as to where the next step is. He did however inject some vision. Individuals in local campaigns did well. However the overall campaign was dire. There was no vision in the leaflets (we did our own in Newcastle under Lyme), and to receive on Eve of Poll an good morning leaflet containing one of the scare facts was the last straw. Our website is useless as a campaigning web site.
Centrally our party needs to wake up. We need to look for new relationships, we need to support a Brexit that does as little damage as possible and above we need to expose those right wing free thinkers who will impose significant damage on the many workers who voted for out.
I think all MPs should wake up and listen to constituents more.
I wonder as a woman who has a French connection, if I had not experienced the total lack of understanding on child access and child abduction under Brussels 11a, would my vote have different?
Its surprising how issues will force change, actually my family joined the out vote because of my problems.
Years and years of lack of understanding in a very emotional issues.
This was the revenge of the forgotten, uneducated, and disconnected against the educated, the cosmopolitan, the movers and shakers. Much of my sympathy lies with the former. We the educated have ignored those left behind for far too long.
That applies to all three parties. We dismissed the immigration campaigners as racists and xenophobes. That was self-satisfied, unfair, and unwise. We have their answer now.
It was almost a riot carried out using pencil and paper. When rioters are angry, confused, and don’t know what to do, they just trash the place so that nobody else can have much fun there either. That is what the Brexiters have done to Britain.
Sorry to lower tone but trying to drown sorrows by ingesting as many Biszkopty z Galaretka Wisniowa w Czekoldazie (Polish Cherry Jaffa cakes) as possible before the “take back our country brigade” ban them.
What I want to know is when will Brexit give me my free unicorn?
Could I add something a little important.
Housing, the care of the mentally ill, failing badly.
The NHS, overworked and needing tlc, housing. Bath, is now a city purely for the tourist and filled with student accommodation. How about those who live here?
I don’t think any product will be banned.
Time to get a reality check?
The political classes/establishment should understand why they lost. Those who were disadvantaged turned out on mass and voted leave because their concerns were never properly addressed, they were either ignored or branded bigots then ignored.
The sensible way forward is to join the EEA. This means free movement which most on the Brexit side won’t like, but it is a position that would have majority support. Some of the legitimate concerns of Brexit voters such as housing could then be properly addressed rather than ignored.
The political establishment including the lib dems need to admit they have failed a certain section of society, respect the democratic will and seek to listen to people better. The results are earth shattering, they mean that between them every single establishment party plus the greens could only persuade 48% of the public to trust them. 52% voted against the advice of every single establishment party.
If the lib dems had allowed a referendum 5 years ago remain might have won then. I don’t understand why they blocked this vote from happening five years ago? Perhaps someone here could tell me?
David Allen
This was the revenge of the forgotten, uneducated, and disconnected against the educated, the cosmopolitan, the movers and shakers. Much of my sympathy lies with the former.
Indeed. There was a time when one of the things those who felt they were forgotten, ignored, betrayed or despised by the establishment would do to make their point about their feelings would be to vote Liberal.
The old Liberal Party, after the Conservative-Labour two-party system had been established was often dismissed as a party of the “Celtic fringe” because it remained in existence in part because the places that continued to elect Liberal MPs were mostly in the remote parts of the UK. In those places is got votes and indeed revived because it was seen as such a thing, an anti-establishment party, a party very clearly detached from the London-based ruling elite.
The community politics revival of the Liberal Party in other parts of the country built on this, doing politics in a way very different from the established way, looking very different from establishment politicians. It was a vote-winner. The success was to get people who felt cut off, who could very easily have been tricked into voting for extremism, to vote for a party that while anti-establishment in many ways was actually liberal, moderate and pragmatic.
I had better not say anything more, because I don’t want to get into one of our usual arguments, David. Or at least, let’s jump a few decades, and agree that Clegg was wrong to make it a central aspect of his leadership to throw away what remained of that historical background of ours, that was certainly very much in existence, for example, when I won a ward that was a target for the BNP, and I suspect would have voted massively for Brexit yesterday: without, of course, compromising my liberal values.
As I have commented much on the Hague Convention on International Law. Made comments to the last meeting of Judges. Written comments on the Brussels 11a addition, also been to the House on the subject of human rights.
Not perhaps a highly intelligent woman, but I don’t particularly mind comments that I may not be a true academic, that’s freedom for you to comment.
I have used the word comment many times, that’s the right we have, reasonable polite comments to unfair situations that concern many of us.
The European vote has opened up a new faultline in British politics, one which cuts across existing party lines, for the most part. For many years it’s been obvious that the old Labour/Tory party system was crumbling. Today it is in tatters, with both parties irrevocably split on the European issue — and, at some level, the Liberal Democrats as well.
Aside from the inevitable economic and social disturbance that we can expect as a result of the vote, we should expect a prolonged period of political turmoil as well, one which may well see the total dissolution of the old parties, or — even if their names are retained — their reshaping into vehicles for new forms of discontent.
This is a chance for the Liberal Democrats, if we can speak very clearly about the importance of liberal values in this New (poorer, angrier, more conflicted, and quite possibly smaller) Britain we face. It is also, unfortunately, a chance for a party of the extreme ‘populist’ right, one which unashamedly runs on a platform of xenophobia within and without. It is the essential role of the Liberal Democrats to be an undivided opposition to such a party.
………………………….And when the call went out to Jeremy Corbyn, he refused to answer. Their self-interested political maneuvering has taken our country to the brink, and we are toppling over the edge………………
I thought Tim had more integrity than this…
Corbyn said the same things as Farron; that immigrants were, in the main, an asset to the UK economy, that our low wage/zero hours economy was not the fault of the EU, that the austerity that was etc…..
What should Corbyn have said? The so called Labour areas have, for several years been moving in the direction of UKIP…Farage promised a simple fix of all their problems and they ‘bought the farm’……
There has been a major sea-change in politics in recent years; far better for Tim to ask why didn’t the LibDem party pick up the disaffected?…
Britain voted out of the EU because a lot of people simply do not like the EU or the concept of supranational conglomerates. Take the economic fears out of the equation and the result would have been a Brexit landslide. There’s a lot speculation about why this or that group voted in or out, but the reality is The EU is not popular in England and it’s probably only as popular as it is Scotland because it’s seen as an antidote to English/Westminster domination in much the same way the EU was seen as an antidote to the Conservatives despite the abundant evidence that to the contrary. The half of remains campaign that was not threats and dire warnings was dedicated to reassuring people that Turkey wouldn’t join and that they knew the EU was dysfunctional, but could reform its institutions from within. This rather suggest at least some of Remain knew they were selling the electorate a pup. because of course the EU is about expansion, integrations through ever closer union and displacing the idea of the Nation State. There is no going back. The EU is a dead entity in England. The Progressive parties have to learn to live in the new reality and find other ways of engaging with electorate. l
@Simon Shaw “You are missing the point that Corbyn has let his own party and his own members down by his own abject failure in leadership on this issue.”
Ironically, Corbyn’s position on the EU is probably a lot closer to his members (and the wider electorate) than the MPs who will now try to replace him with the sort of person who got that party into such a mess in the first place. The modern Labour Party is a tragicomedy as it attempts to reconcile the liberal and the illiberal left of British politics. UKIP and the Tories are no better as they try to hold together a liberal and illiberal right wing. Unfortunately, the Lib Dems, while united by their liberalness (mostly), appear to be fundamentally divided between the left and the right. Perhaps the result of the referendum will lead to a realignment of political parties, though I suspect that conservative (small-c) vested interests will trump the need for reform.
The debate about membership of the EU crossed party boundaries so I think it is unfair to criticise either Cameron or Corbyn for failing to lead their parties to one side instead of the other. I’m not convinced Cameron needed to resign (after all, he delivered what he promised at the election), and I think Corbyn presented a more positive and rational argument for continued membership of the EU than did many others on the Remain side (including Cameron and possibly Farron) who simply concentrated on the possible downside of leaving.
“And when you say “Labour crashed the economy” that’s not really been the accusation, has it?”
Having spent 5 years telling the electorate that Labour cannot be trusted with the economy and another year telling them that Labour cannot be trusted with anything else, it seems foolhardy and hypocritical to rely on Labour politicians (including former Chancellors of the Exchequer) to be trusted on remaining in the EU.
@expats “far better for Tim to ask why didn’t the LibDem party pick up the disaffected?…”
Because, sadly, for 5 years the Lib Dem party disaffected them.
This referendum has really divided the nation and it going to take a lot to reunite if this can be even be done. It has shown that economically connected areas to have returned in favour of remain, while dis-advantaged areas leaning towards leave.
I am proud to say that the Libdems have played more of a part to get the internationalist vote out to remain.
Although a disappointing vote, most ibDems supporters have stayed united with the leadership and should now look at positive measures to get the best for the people given what economically we have left with falling share prices, pensions, currency, expectations etc.
We see Boris J has his opportunist result to defeat Mr Cameron, only a couple of years ago I thought a Mr B Johnson was so pro-EU but then principles just go out of the window when in pursuit of power: that’s the way that right wing politics work!
Just when people are looking to the main opposition leader: J Corbyn, I find Labour MPs actually tabling a motion to force him from leadership: more collective suicide?
Have the Labour MPs involved got a death wish for their party’s future?
The only progressive parties to come out of this is the Liberal democrats (stay united), the Green party, of course SNP (we told you so), and Plaid Cymru (new hope for Wales).
For the people of Carmarthen and Dyfed, my home, is for Wales to be confident in itself, we have a Welsh parliament: a Lab/LibDems coalition in government and a Plaid Cymru as the main opposition party.
Please do not rule out new nations entering the EU: Wales/Cymru and Scotland. I am losing confidence that the UK can ever reform because of division. It such a shame the Tory divisive policies have lead us to economic disaster and protential breakup of the UK.
@Peter Watson
“Simon Shaw: “You are missing the point that Corbyn has let his own party and his own members down by his own abject failure in leadership on this issue.”
Ironically, Corbyn’s position on the EU is probably a lot closer to his members (and the wider electorate) than the MPs who will now try to replace him with the sort of person who got that party into such a mess in the first place.”
So you think Labour Party members are as anti-EU as Corbyn is and has been? Any basis for your assumption?
“Having spent 5 years telling the electorate that Labour cannot be trusted with the economy and another year telling them that Labour cannot be trusted with anything else, it seems foolhardy and hypocritical to rely on Labour politicians (including former Chancellors of the Exchequer) to be trusted on remaining in the EU.”
I don’t accept your premise, but even if I did, why would that be the case?
Why would the 30% or so of the electorate who are still “foolish” enough to vote Labour not trust Labour policians? You seem to have a very low opinion of those voters.
Clearly Labour are doomed unless they get rid of Corbyn. The problem for them is how to achieve that.
The real problem for Labour isn’t Corbyn. The people trying to replace him even more out of step with their voters.
The country just voted to leave the EU and it is not going to vote back in the foreseeable future.
@Simon Shaw
I’m rather surprised that the state of the Labour party is such an important issue for you today when there is so much else going on. I’m sure that Labour supporters are touched by your concern for their welfare. I’m not one, so will just have to wait and see if they become something that I could support. For the last few years I’ve lent them my vote as a default anti-Tory position once I realised that I could no longer support the Lib Dem party but I keep coming back to this site in the (apparently vain) hope that I could return to the fold.
I would hope that lessons can be learnt from the Remain campaign’s failure to change hearts and minds (at least in the right direction) by relying on a negative campaign based on fear and personal attacks, but from this thread and parallel ones – and the wider media today – I am not so sure that they will be.
@Glenn “The real problem for Labour isn’t Corbyn. The people trying to replace him even more out of step with their voters.”
Agreed. It seems ironic that they want to drag the party even further away from the voters who they blame Corbyn for failing to win over.
There seem to be a lot of possible permutations which could change the political landscape (or simply leave a lot of grumpy people remaining uncomfortably in the current parties). Perhaps, rather than disappear, UKIP will remain as a sort of illiberal conservative (small-c) party. Perhaps Lib Dems will disappear in a resulting squeeze between liberal wings of the Labour and Conservative parties.
Interesting times.
Unfortunately.
@Peter Watson
“I’m rather surprised that the state of the Labour party is such an important issue for you today when there is so much else going on.”
Are you really? I’m surprised at that. When Corbyn’s lack of leadership can plausibly be argued to carry the main responsibilty for the disastrous EU Referendum result, and when the Leader of HM Opposition is clearly not up to the job of heading an alternative government, then I would have said it was highly topical.
“I’m sure that Labour supporters are touched by your concern for their welfare.”
Do you really not understand how politics works? Why would I have more than very limited concern for Labour supporters’ welfare? The concern I have is that Corbyn is so unattractive to swing voters that he is actually a negative in terms of stopping Conservative hegemony, even with the massive splits that there are in the Conservative Party.
@Simon Shaw
On a parallel thread you write that you spoilt your ballot paper. Perhaps you would be better occupied calling for Tim Farron’s resignation as his lack of leadership could not even deliver your vote 😉
“Today we wake to a deeply divided country.”
It was already divided, Tim. Only now the Establishment are waking up to it.
Simon Shaw 24th Jun ’16 – 3:32pm…………Are you really? I’m surprised at that. When Corbyn’s lack of leadership can plausibly be argued to carry the main responsibilty for the disastrous EU Referendum result, and when the Leader of HM Opposition is clearly not up to the job of heading an alternative government, then I would have said it was highly topical…..
Well, at least such hyperbole is not out of place on today, of all days….
The best speech I heard for ‘Remaining’ came from Corbyn …Sadly it was barely reported in the media…
At least he was honest about the EU being his preferred option “Warts and all” instead of the outlandish claims from Cameron/Osborne which, far from convincing anyone to stay, did more for the ‘Brexit’ camp…
Still, why bother with facts, when the most outlandish claims give you another stick with which to pursue your pet project…
@Simon Shaw
“When Corbyn’s lack of leadership can plausibly be argued to carry the main responsibilty for the disastrous EU Referendum result…”
Hardly. I think you could make a more plausible argument based on astrology.
According to Yougov’s eve-of-referendum poll, 68% of Labour voters voted Remain, compared with 71% of Lib Dem voters. In polling margin of error terms, literally nothing in it.
So we have Corbyn – historically lukewarm on the EU, and leader of a party which has always had an outspoken anti-EU element – managing to persuade about the same percentage of his party’s supporters to vote Remain as did Tim Farron, a strongly Europhile leader of what is reputedly our most Europhile party. This is despite the fact that many of Labour’s voters are in that C2DE bracket that was voting for Leave in droves.
These numbers suggest to me that Corbyn’s powers of persuasion have been a lot more effective than Tim Farron’s in this instance.
@expats
“The best speech I heard for ‘Remaining’ came from Corbyn …Sadly it was barely reported in the media…”
I’m quite sure that you regard virtually every speech that Corbyn gives as being the best speech you ever heard, but we are talking about leadership here – or lack of it.
Personally I’m not in the least bit sympathetic to Labour, but when those that are say the same thing about Corbyn then you know the game is up.
Accept your uniquely singular excellence.
Acknowledge your gifts to a world worse off without the legal concepts, creative arts, technologies and brilliant systems having emerged from British minds.
We around the world look forward to the possibility of an innovative synthesis to emerge,
in this iteration of your nation.
@Peter Watson
“On a parallel thread you write that you spoilt your ballot paper. Perhaps you would be better occupied calling for Tim Farron’s resignation as his lack of leadership could not even deliver your vote”
As I’ve always been opposed to this referendum on principle (as I was to the previous one 41 years ago), it seemed to me to be hypocritical to take part in it.
That doesn’t mean that, as an observer, I can’t see the deficiencies in the leadership (sic) given by Corbyn on this issue.
Simon,
Corbyn does not have special powers off persuasion. He’s the hypnotoad from Futurama
The responsibility for this situation lies with the governments of the UK which over 20 or 30 years have allowed public services and redistribution to the poor or vulnerable (and recently -ie since 2010!) the ‘middling people’ of this country to suffer whilst the well to do have all benefited from the gains from globalisation.
And the Liberal Democrats have been to ready to be part of this – even leading it in the years 2010 to 2015. All but three regions/countries voted leave on Thursday. All of the Leaving regions have suffered from lack of political representation for years now …it was no surprise that they should take advantage of a vote.
It is time not to side shamefully with alarm clock Britain, but with the British who have been disposed of their opportunities and lifechances, the British whose life expectancy is 10 years less than the beneficiaries of right of centre economic policies,the British who were frankly fed up with being ignored by the Westminster Village clique or really have been saying, ‘let them each brioche’.
@ Simon Shaw,
I was opposed to this referendum. Nothing about the way this referendum was conducted, makes me any less hostile to those who called it. Nevertheless, I don’t understand how anyone who wished to remain, could choose not to vote. I feel desperately sorry for the young generation who, as predicted, have had their futures determined by older but not necessarily wiser, people.
As far as persuasion is concerned, we seem to have entered a Barnum and Bailey world where earnest politicians are ignored and sales of snake oil are soaring.
This is why the Liberal Democrats are in terminal decline.
This an outrageous, hate-filled, prejudicial, discriminatory slur on 17 million voters who chose leave.
We are not all ‘intolerant, closed-hearted, pessimistic and inward looking’!
Many of us chose leave for fundamental principles of self-determination and democracy. These should be core Liberal Democrat principles but it seems no longer. Instead the leadership wanted us to subsume to an unelected, unaccountable superstate run by a privileged oligarchy.
Farron is a huge liability to this party. We need a new leader who knows what being a Liberal Democrat means and who doesn’t sound off with abusive rants because he doesn’t get his own way.
Quite right Peter – on both points. There was always a genuine Liberal case for leaving and transforming in a Liberal fashion the way the UK relates to the rest of Europe.
That was a misjudged speech and it was a wasted opportunity.
Too many of those who guided the Party disastrously 2007 to 2015 are still at the helm.
Many, were even taken on board by the Remain campaign. Was a disaster that was.
as a non-member sympathiser, I agree Peter.
@Peter Reynolds
“This an outrageous, hate-filled, prejudicial, discriminatory slur on 17 million voters who chose leave.
We are not all ‘intolerant, closed-hearted, pessimistic and inward looking’!”
Sorry, Peter, but you’ve lost me.
In what way is it “an outrageous, hate-filled, prejudicial, discriminatory slur on 17 million voters who chose leave”?
And in what way did Tim accuse those voters of being “intolerant, closed-hearted, pessimistic and inward looking”? He was talking about the Leave Campaign, surely.
I think it’s right for Tim to express the emotion of the defeated at the moment. Indeed I wholeheartedly wish he had been given a more prominent role in the campaign because, for me, he alone clearly set out the ideals, the passionate cause of the EU during the long weary months of facts and figures.
However, I agree with Bill le Breton and others who have argued that the cause of our defeat has been the neglect of the have-nots by all three main political parties since Thatcher overthrew the post war consensus and replaced it by greed and wealth for some and a long long wait for a few pence to trickle down for others.
Well, in these circumstances we might have expected a revolution and on Thursday we got one. Being British, it wasn’t a bloody revolution but a democratic one, but still, life as we know it has been overthrown. Though we may be bitterly disappointed at the result, that our ideals have been rejected, surely we can feel proud that the alienated took up the democratic option, registered to vote and quietly but firmly rejected the establishment in its entirety. Yes, we know they were misled, that they have followed charismatic leaders who told them they could take back control in a world where only the very rich and global companies have real control, but I have been impressed by the lack of gloating in Leave voters when interviewed after the result.
So ,surely, we Lib Dems who have always fought for the powerless, should be asking where we went wrong, should be looking at the concerns of those who have felt that no one listens to them, should be fighting for solutions to their problems, should be giving them hope. Without realising it we let them down when we went into coalition and backed austerity, now we must find a new way forward, a way in which wealth is shared, in which the powerless can share in the good things in life. We must take people’s fears seriously and provide answers and we must be ready to help them when they realise, as they inevitably will, that their false prophets have manipulated them for their own ends.
It is not only Britain that is in this state, and we have certainly done our little best to stoke it up elsewhere- France, Denmark, etc in Europe and I have heard from America that people are very worried about Trump there and working on how to counter it. It is uncomfortably like between the Wars where governments failed to cope with the Great Depression and people turned to the extremes – fascism and communism – who offered
action and hope. After the War in the West there was the example of the prewar New Deal, then Keynes, Beveridge welfare, etc which transformed the well being of people and their society and I remember the feeling of everything getting better and better.
Tim Farron …. You may be angry because the voters disagreed with the line up of political parties, bankers and ‘experts’ who tried to bully and cajole them into voting Remain. I would have expected the leader of the Lib Dems to try and understand what underpinned the electorate to vote for Brexit. No, it was not Farage’s bigotry that persuaded me to vote Leave. I thought long and hard before I made my decision. My decision was based on concern that the EU was incapable of reform. I hope you will ditch your anger and take the time to understand why people voted for Leave. How about getting a questionnaire out to members asking how they voted and why.
@ Pat,
I know from the decision to vote leave which was made by some of my family and friends that bigotry was not the reason for the decision to vote leave by many people. People voted leave for a variety of reasons. Nevertheless, unarguably, some people were motivated by that, and I believe that a vote leave has put the wind under their wings.
There are many migrants, some second and third generation who are now very fearful because of the campaign and the result.
If we don’t listen to the ‘experts’ wrong though they may be at times, who do we listen to…. the David Ickes of this world?
It is a pity that Tim Farron cannot keep his guns trained on the guilty instead of on what is seen as an easy target like Jeremy Corbyn, who actually articulated my less than enthusiastic support for the EU in its unreformed state.