As he quits mud-wrestling with Theresa May to spend more time with Piccadilly Circus (available in all good music outlets), Norman Baker receives very high praise indeed in an Independent editorial today. “The outgoing minister was more than just a troublemaker in the Home Office”, says the strapline, with the article including this passage:
Mr Baker was thus the living embodiment of the “brakes” theory of the Liberal Democrats’ role in the Coalition – stalling, slowing and occasionally thwarting the worst excesses of what an unfettered Conservative government would get up to. On migration, for example, Mr Baker would have spoken up for the report today on the true benefits of it. On civil liberties and human rights, on Europe, on the economy, on tax cuts for the rich, on education reforms and, as in Mr Baker’s case, on drugs policy, the Liberal Democrats were there as a civilising, liberalising and rational force for good. In the Home Office it might be said that Mr Baker curbed Ms May’s nastier instincts.
You can read the full article here.
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