Tim Farron has just been on Sky’s Murnaghan show, talking about a variety of issues from the European elections – what can the Lib Dems do to stop annihilation was the introduction. Here are the highlights:
The first question was whether we are paying price for going into government
If you stand for election there’s an occupational hazard you might get elected and that is what you should want if you believe passionately that Britain and the world should operate in a different way.
This the first liberal mid-term since Lloyd George’s day and of course there’s a price to pay but I’d rather be in the position of making the economy stronger and society fairer than being on the outside carping.
Only Lib Dems stand up for Britain’s interests
What would be a good result in the European elections, Farron was asked:
Our main job in all of this is to stand up for Britain’s interests. UKIP’s position is clear but staggeringly wrong…
…Someone has to have the backbone to say, hang about, we will sleepwalk out of the EU if somebody doesn’t stand up and say that Britain needs to stay in for Britain’s interests and that’s the Liberal Democrats. In many ways it’s a two horse race between UKIP who want out and the Liberal Democrats who want in. Anything else is a wasted vote.
No regrets on Nick v Nigel
Sometimes in politics you really ought to take the unpopular side in an argument, especially when it’s right. It would be economic suicide to leave the EU and only one party the Liberal Democrats are being honest enough to saying so. Nick Clegg showed bravery and integrity knowing full well he was taking the unpopular side in an argument and it’s done him a lot of good. Obviously we want to do well in the elections but this isn’t just about the Liberal Democrats’ interests it’s about Britain’s interests. If Britain leaves the EU it’ll be a staggering blow to our economy and to our position as a world power and if Labour and the Tories don’t have the backbone to stand up to Mr Farage and say so then it means that Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats have to do so and we are proudly doing so.
Should UKIP be included in the General Election debates?
It’s not for us to decide. It depends on your showing in the last election of that sort. UKIP have earned themselves a place in European debates but when it comes to Westminster elections that is yet to be proved.
Is the UK a Christian Country?
I’m a committed Christian. I also don’t think politicians should play politics with it. In many ways it’s honest to say that Britain is not fundamentally a county that allies itself to one religion or another. You don’t become a Christian because the country you live in sort of buys into a state faith which is why I’ve always believed you should disestablish the church of England for the good of the Church of England and give it the freedom to speak the message it was set up to speak. It’s good when these matters are discussed but it’s a shame when you get the strong suspicion that it’s only being raised by the Prime Minister and others to make partisan points and the matter is rather more important than that.
There were also questions about the investigations into Cyril Smith. He basically stuck to what he said to the BBC yesterday, that the police investigations had to take their course without political interference.
He was also inevitably asked about Lord Rennard but there is very little he can say other than to restate the current position which is that there is a process in place which is being managed by the English party. Despite Murnaghan’s best efforts, he didn’t really go beyond that point.
Follow @LibDemVoice on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Weekly Road Report - West End Ward #dundeewestend
Sue Gray: Beware of beat-sweeteners and source-greasers
Is Kemi Badenoch still in the lead? - The Week in Polls
Belljar
England urged to bring in minimum unit price on alcohol as deaths rise 10% a year
John Waller
Peter Martin
Katharine Pindar
Mary Reid
8 Comments
Someone should gently tell Tim that we are no longer in mid-term. It’s the start of the run-in and mid-term excuses no longer wash.
Tony Greaves
In the lead story in tonight’s Telegraph : LibDems told to expect to lose all MEPs in Euro elections ‘bloodbath’ who is the “one insider” who is quoted as saying that the party briefing chaired by Paddy Ashdown discussed the possibility of losing all the Lib Dem MEPs and that “it looks like an absolute bloodbath”?
And who is/are the “party sources” who claim that the Lib Dem vote in East Midlands region (the place where Mr. Clegg was elected as an MEP) is expected to fall from 130,000 to 13,000? This is particularly puzzling quote as the Lib Dem vote in East Midlands in 2009 was in fact 151.428.
So the “Pointless” Lib Dems (as if Jeremy Browne’s comments last week weren’t bad enough!) will see their support “cratering” in a “bloodbath”. And all of this from “party sources”?
What is going on here? Who are these people?
Over the next month we shall see if the dire predictions come true. A significant question in my mind is the extent to which the recent rapid opinion poll rise for UKIP ( more pronounced for Euro elections) and the disappointing opinion poll figures for the Lib Dems, are two separate issues. Are we being swept up in a general political trend made worse by being in Coalition, or are our perceived political stances at issue ? If it’s the former, there might be little we can do to improve our electoral popularity, perhaps. Any other LDV views along these lines ?
“Are we being swept up in a general political trend made worse by being in Coalition, or are our perceived political stances at issue ? If it’s the former, there might be little we can do to improve our electoral popularity, perhaps.”
I’m interested that implicitly admitted here is that a corollary to latter statement might exist; something [could] be done about the political stance…
It is something like 52 weeks to the last week of the General Election.
Tim Farron would be wise to distance himself from the loser-in-chief, Nick Clegg.
To adapt some of Tim’s words — Someone has to have the backbone to say, hang about, we will sleepwalk out of existence as a political party if we do not get rid of Clegg.
As ever, Tony Greaves is correct. The mid-term was two years ago and since then things have just got worse and worse culminating in Clegg “throwing down the gauntlet” to Farage. Failure upon toxic failure from Clegg.
The longer Clegg stays, the longer the party does badly at the polls.
Tim Farron
This the first liberal mid-term since Lloyd George’s day
No it us not. What we have now is NOT a Liberal Democrat government. It’s a government which is predominantly Conservative, a government whose policies reflect the balance of MPs in the coalition, which is five-sixths Conservative and one-sixth Liberal Democrat.
This continual use of language which suggests that what we have now is a 100% Liberal Democrat government, or at least what a 100% Liberal Democrat government would be doing – going on and on about us “being in government”, about “mid-term blues” and so on, has been hugely damaging to the party. I myself have accepted and defended the formation of the coalition, not because I like what it is doing, but because I accept it is the only stable government that could have arisen out of the Parliament elected in May 2010, and I realise how limited a junior coalition party like us actually is in what it can do in that situation. But my attempts to defend the situation are continually undermined by the party’s own leadership, which keeps using language that ordinary people take as saying that we as a party are in 100% agreement with what this Tory-dominated government is doing, and we are very pleased and happy with what this Tory-dominated government is doing. Saying this is a “liberal mid-term”, as if what we have now is what we would have had if we had a majority Liberal Democrat government is part of this. It completely destroys the argument I am trying to use in our defence about this being the government the people by their votes and the electoral system by its distortion gave us, not the ideal that I would want to have seen and campaigned for when I asked people to vote Liberal Democrat in 2010.
Why is Tim Farron always painted as a party left-winger and as the likely left candidate for the leadership, when he seems very happy to echo the party right’s language of praise and support for this Tory-dominated government, and its (if it is not deliberate, then it says bad things about their intellectual capacity) confusing of the two separate issues of support for a government in the sense of accepting it is what democracy gave us, and support for it in the sense of agreeing with its policy direction?
We are Liberal Democrats, not Tories. Therefore, while we might support the current government in the first sense of the word, we most definitely should not be supporting it in the second, and we should make sure we steer clear of language which can be read as implying that. The failure of the party leadership to do this means most people in this country have been led to believe we support this Tory-dominated, and quite frankly very nasty, government, in the first sense rather than just in the second.
Me
led to believe we support this Tory-dominated, and quite frankly very nasty, government, in the first sense rather than just in the second.
Sorry, got my firsts and seconds the wrong way round in that last clause, make that “led to believe we support this Tory-dominated, and quite frankly very nasty, government, in the second sense rather than just in the first”.
Late to comment, as I have a life to lead outside staring at a screen.
Many comments are pithy as clearly based on reality. 50 years of
membership, and 30 actually doing front line campaigning, and being
on 3 levels of local goverment, during which I worked with or was an
agent for over 100 elected Lib, Dem Councillors allows me to be an
old fart and a yesterday’s man.
From that side line I woudl just comment that Joe and Josephine Public
was/is hungry for honest, principled, politicians. They give every new
face the benfit of the doubt, if that is the image they see, and if that new
face then disappoints/breaks a promise, then they do not forgive. Farage
is the new Nick (from the last election debates). If he breaks a promise,
which he will, then the result will be that which Nick has endured for the
past 3 years from the Mail and Murdoch.
Sadly, good LD Councillors and MEPs will be the collateral damage while
we wait for UKIP to implode after this May.