Nick Clegg shows why he is such a credible, authoritative leader of the opposition to May’s “hard brexit”

A year ago, Nick Clegg’s career appeared to be pretty much over. Some even wondered if he night have been upset to have clung on to his Sheffield Hallam seat.

Now, former critics are starting to be glad that he is there. He is by far the most experienced politician in the country on both international trade and how the European Union works.

This week has seen the latest in a fairly long line of articles, which started with the Mystic Clegg stuff in June, suggesting that Nick Clegg’s star is in the ascendancy again. The New Statesman, of all things, was even nice about him.

Clegg has previously voiced the hope that a botched attempt at hard Brexit might trigger a desire for an alternative to Tory rule among the British people. For him personally, Brexit is the perfect issue upon which to position himself as a voice of reason. He has the experience, the gravitas and the passion to help win back some of the political credibility he lost during the dark days of the coalition and the tuition fees debacle. Whether he can ever fully lose the traitor tag remains to be seen, but his intervention on Brexit will be welcome among the 16.1 million people who didn’t vote for any kind of Brexit, let alone a hard one.

Over at the Huffington Post, Beth Leslie suggests that Brexit means that it is time to forgive the Liberal Democrats.

Four million UKIP voters in 2015 elected just one MP, but they snowballed an idea that made Brexit a reality. Why couldn’t we centrists do the same? And with the money, resources and national recognition of an established party, the Liberal Democrats are the best-placed vehicle for us to try to do so.

Tim Farron and Nick Clegg have both been brilliant on Brexit all the way through. Tim’s PMQ got the PM to admit she doesn’t give two hoots about the nearly half the country who voted to remain and Clegg continues to work with others to fight the parliamentary campaign against a hard brexit that nobody voted for.

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Boris’s pro-EU article highlights the stupidity of Theresa May’s hard Brexit approach

We’ve known for a while that Boris Johnson wrote two articles for the Telegraph, for and against Brexit, two days before declaring himself as a “leaver”. Only the leave article was published, leaving the remain article under wraps. Via a book and the Sunday Times, the second article has now been revealed.

It contains such corkers from Boris as these:

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Extra push for Liz Leffman in Witney

witney-mosaic
Hundreds of supporters have been flocking to the Witney Lib Dem HQ this weekend. I was there earlier today and delivered a whole village. It was fantastic to see our hub throbbing with activity. One of the main things hapening this weekend is the delivery of a constituency-wide newspaper, the West Oxfordshire Chronicle.

Liz Leffman has been thanking supporters for the fantastic work done so far and asks for an extra push in the final days before polling on Thursday this week.

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LibLInk: Jeremy Purvis: West’s response no match for Lebanon’s crisis

Lib Dem Peer Jeremy Purvis recently visited Lebanon, an already struggling country which has taken so many refugees from the conflict in Syria. Here he writes for the Scotsman about his experience.

The scale of the flow of refugees into Lebanon cannot be understated. Amnesty International puts the figure at more than 1.5 million. The flow of refugees into the country is proportionately the equivalent of the US taking most of the population of Mexico (little good a Trumpian wall). The number of refugees that the UK has accepted pales into insignificance by comparison.

Driving along the Syrian border area I

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LibLink: Julian Huppert “The UK’s Investigatory Powers Bill is about to become law – here’s why that should terrify us”

Julian Huppert MPJulian Huppert has written a powerful piece on Open Democracy.  He writes:

The Investigatory Powers Bill is sneaking up on the final steps before it becomes law – something that should terrify all of us.

Some of the powers in the Bill are deeply intrusive, and with very little possible justification. All of us want to be safe, and protected from terrorists and the like – but the evidence that these powers are all needed is thin indeed. However, the cost to all of our privacy is huge.

For example, a power the state never had before is to require a log to be kept for a year of every website we ever go to. Just think of that – your browsing history stored, just in case it’s ever useful. If you ever choose to visit a depression support website, would you want that to now be logged, potentially revealing your mental health state? What about an abortion advice site? Marriage guidance? Why does the state need to know this about every one of us?

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LibDemVoice Fantasy Football League: September manager of the month

Our second (belated) update from the LDV Fantasy Football League. The season’s now eight weeks’ old, but already England is on its second manager… though retaining our usual international form.

Congratulations to Alain Desmier, our Manager of the Month for September. His Mountgrove Maulers romped an impressive 280 points, ahead of Mark Jewell’s Preston West End (259) and Christopher Morgan’s Last year’s man (235).

That result is enough to see Alain topping our overall league table:

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ALDC’s By-election report – 13 October 2016

ALDC Master Logo (for screen)ALDC monitors and records the results of council by-elections on behalf of the Liberal Democrats. All our by-election results are also posted on our website.

Another busy night saw 10 principal by-elections, all in England and all with Lib Dem candidates. Fielding a full slate in the principal by-elections around the country in itself is a fantastic achievement.

One to watch this week was Broadstone ward in Poole with a by-election triggered by the resignation of the sitting Conservative councillor. Candidate Vikki Slade is fighting Conservative plans to bus services and youth services and will be a strong local voice, standing up for residents. Vikki and the team have convincingly beat the Tories into second place with a 24% swing and getting 69.3%. Fantastic work and well done!

Vikki Slade plus teamThe results in full are:
LD Vikki Slade 2184
Conservative 733
UKIP 121
Green 57
Labour 45
Majority: 1451
 LD gain from Conservatives
(Percentage change since 2015)

Two by-elections in Tim Farron country saw the team hold two seats for the Lib Dems on Cumbria County Council and South Lakeland District Council. They did this with a convincing lead over the Tories of 224 votes and 185 respectively. Well done to Steve Rooke who is now elected to Cumbria County Council and Andrew Jarvis elected to South Lakeland District Council.

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Donald Trump’s attitude to holes and digging is just plain dumb

The US Presidential election has boiled down to this: If it is a referendum on Trump, Clinton wins. If it is a referendum on Clinton, Trump wins.

At the moment, it seems to be an extraordinarily florid referendum on Trump. This is a shame, as policy doesn’t seem to be getting a look in. But I suppose Americans are debating clearly the sort of person they want to see in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

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ICYMI: Tim Farron at PMQs: When will she put the interests of hard-working British people ahead of an extremist protectionism that absolutely nobody voted for?

Courtesy of Channel 4 News:

A strong question from Tim:

The Prime Minister appears to have made a choice, and that choice is to side with the protectionists and nationalists who have taken over her party, as surely as Momentum has taken over the Labour party. She has chosen a hard Brexit that was never on anybody’s ballot paper and she has chosen to turn her back on British business in the process. As a result, petrol and food retailers have warned of huge price rises at the pumps and on the supermarket shelves in the coming days. When will she put the interests of hard-working British people ahead of an extremist protectionism that absolutely nobody voted for?

May’s answer showed that she thinks she doesn’t have to bother at all about the almost half the country who don’t want us to hurtle towards the disaster of a hard Brexit.

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Friday fun: The first anniversary of Stephen Tall’s naked run

I will be forever grateful to my former co-editor Stephen Tall for teaching me two very valuable life lessons; be careful what you commit to on live TV and honour your pledges with good humour and grace.

It’s a year since we first saw video of his Naked Run down Whitehall, filmed for the Daily Politics.

Here’s a reminder:

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Is sovereignty just another source of likely disappointment for the Brexiteers?

Whilst there is a suspicion amongst the more ardent Remain supporter that Brexit was simply about immigration, there were those who claimed that, by voting to leave the European Union, we could reclaim our sovereignty, taking back control, as they put it.

Now, I’m in a sense relaxed about that, in that if that was their genuine wish, then it is at least philosophically consistent. Yes, the question of cost was never really discussed – like the Scottish independence campaign, the supposed benefits were in the headlines, the price in minuscule type, if it was ever mentioned at all. Fair enough, one might suppose – there is yet to be the political salesman that raises the relative drawbacks of their product.

But the problem is that sovereignty is a concept that, in a complex, inter-related world, is becoming increasingly blurred. Do nation states have the ability to “take back control” any more?

In his recent Ditchley Lecture, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer spoke of the increasingly complex nature of jurisdiction, noting that the United States has signed more than 800 international agreements, most of which defer supervision of some element of our lives to transnational, unelected, unaccountable bodies – the internet being the most universal of its type – yet which go virtually unnoticed by the general public.

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Farron: Government doesn’t understand needs of universities or public perceptions of immigration

Universities UK has published the results of a poll carried out by ICM which shows that only a quarter of people think of foreign students as immigrants and that the vast majority of people think that foreign students make a valuable contribution and should be allowed to stay on to work here after graduation.

Two-thirds agreed that international students have a positive impact on the local economies of the towns and cities that they study in, and three in five (59%) agreed that their economic contribution helps create jobs.

The poll also indicated that seven in ten adults believe it is better if international students use their skills here and work in the UK for a period of time in order to contribute to the economy rather than returning immediately to their home country after completing their stud

 Almost half (47%) of those polled believed there should be no limit on how long international students should be able to stay and work in the UK after they have completed their study, providing they are employed and contributing to the economy.

Tim Farron had this to say about the poll:

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Daisy Cooper appointed Liberal Democrat candidate diversity champion

Daisy Cooper Glasgow 2014Liberal Democrat Leader Tim Farron and President Sal Brinton have appointed Daisy Cooper as the party’s Candidate Diversity Champion, to drive forward and coordinate the party’s action plan to improve the diversity of its MPs. Daisy is quite a force of nature on anything she turns her hand to and she never asks other people to do things she hasn’t done herself. She is very good at recruiting candidates at all levels and actually wrote here about how to build more diverse council groups. 

 Tim Farron said:

I am committed to leading a parliamentary party out of the next election that is bigger and more diverse than the one I currently do. The party membership has backed using every method available to improve the diversity of MPs. 

 As a party fighting to build an open, tolerant and united Britain we have to look like the country we seek to serve. I am delighted that Daisy has agreed to drive our plans to improve our party’s diversity.

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Another Thursday night, more Lib Dem GAINS from Labour and Conservatives

Tonight is a very busy election night with Liberal Democrat candidates in every principal council seat up for election.

The biggest result of the night so far is a spectacular gain in Broadstone in Dorset. Former parliamentary candidate Vikki Slade gained the council seat from the Conservatives.

Remember how we audaciously took a seat from Labour in Tupton, North East Derbyshire, four weeks ago, pretty narrowly but with a massive swing from a standing start? Well, in the same ward we took two parish council seats tonight. Here are the results:

L Dem 394
L Dem 345
Lab 245
Lab 230

That’ll do nicely.

We also held two seats in South Lakeland, Tim Farron’s home area:

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Marmite row – Nick Ferrari demonstrates ignorance of modern business

There’s been a lot of coverage today about the Unilever/retailer wrangle, which has led to some ranges of famous brand products being out of stock on, for example, Tesco’s website. Marmite seems to have been chosen as the leading talking point in this debate. Unilever appear to be asking for increases in prices for their products due to the fall in the value of the pound.

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Time to start building for Britain

I am currently travelling for a year and am currently visiting India. This vibrant and growing economy has lessons for the UK. Everywhere you go there is building going on. New houses, new factories, new shopping complexes. In addition there is an ongoing repair programme for roads, public buildings, ancient monuments, temples. Sure, India still has slums, some schemes take an age to complete, but the thrust of the country is building for the future.

The government – at national, state and local level – is funding a lot of this work, in conjunction with the private sector and heritage and other charities and voluntary groups. What is clear is that government in all its forms has no problem with taxing its citizens and spending a chunk of the money on improving infrastructure, growing the economy, providing jobs and encouraging tourism. Compare that with Brexit UK. Governments of all hues have spent decades convincing us that tax is wicked and must under no circumstances be increased – especially for the rich – and that cuts in public services are vital for the health of the economy. As a result the building trade is on its knees, there is a chronic shortage of houses, public services are being trashed, the NHS is in crisis and vital infrastructure repairs and improvements are being put off into the distant future.

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Making a few calls could make all the difference in Witney

ALDC Master Logo (for screen)At ALDC, our usual by-election HQ has been taken over by supporters phoning for Witney – and what a positive experience it has been!

Lots of our newer party members have used the Witney by-election as an opportunity for some training, and this has been no different on the phones. Last week we were joined by Sally who joined the Lib Dems only a few weeks ago and is now signed up to join us again for the remained of the campaign.

With just a week to go, we need many more people to hit the phone to reach to all of the voters!

There are three easy ways you can help on the phones.

1. Make calls from home. This could not be easier and if you are already on Connect, you should automatically see the list in the Virtual Phone Bank. Alternatively use the Open Virtual Phone Bank –https://www.openvpb.com/vpb_bycode/C82DE1G-3349

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Liberal Youth’s Save Erasmus competition – Deadline approaching

Liberal Youth are campaigning to save the Erasmus exchange programme in future Brexit negotiations. This week they are running a competition to send a group of campaigners to the European Parliament 7th-8th November. Former Erasmus exchange students and exchange programme hopefuls are invited to share their stories as part of a video montage. MEP Catherine Bearder will invite a group to present a Save Erasmus petition in Brussels. The deadline for entries is midnight 18th October. Find out more here.

Over 10,000 people have backed a petition to safeguard the UK’s involvement in the Erasmus programme. Party members overwhelmingly passed a motion to call for the guaranteed continuation of the Erasmus programme and Liberal Democrat Education Spokesperson John Pugh wrote to Brexit minister David Davis demanding he make this clear commitment.

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10 human rights orgs take UK to court over bulk surveillance of the public

Privacy International, Liberty, Amnesty International and seven other organisations are jointly taking the UK and the US to court over their bulk surveillance of ordinary citizens.

This 115 page document sets out the applicants case to the European Court of Human Rights.

The case is about systems whereby the UK and the US are collecting data on all of us without our consent, for example 5 billion records per day of mobile phone locations and hundreds of millions of text messages.

It is argued that this level of surveillance of the public is unnecessary and, in any event, is being done without sufficient …

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Two ways we are addressing diversity

If there is one thing that we can all agree on is the need to encourage a greater degree of diversity within the party. Although our figures on diversity are far from where we want them to be, it is clear that we have begun to make some considerable strides towards adequately addressing this issue. There is an increasing recognition that if we are to herald ourselves as the defenders of equality and tolerance, then those values should be reflected within every aspect of our party. An important step towards this goal was the passing of two diversity and equality motions at Autumn Conference this year on Combatting Racism and Diversity Quotas, put forward by Pauline Pearce and Dawn Barnes respectively.

Summaries of both motions are outlined below:

Conference Motion Diversity Quotas

The motion has been put in place to increase the representation of those with protected characteristics on federal committees and bodies. The party will endeavor to ensure that:

  1. 40 % of those elected to a federal committee identify as men or non-binary, women or non-binary
  2. 10% shall be from minority backgrounds
  3. 10% shall be people from under-represented sexual orientations and gender identities including non-binary identities

Places on these bodies will be filled if the diversity requirements cannot be met or if an insufficient number of candidates with the required characteristic are nominated.

Both men and women will have an equal opportunity of participating at every level of the party in accordance with the Equality Act 2010, however the Act maybe amended to permit positive action to ensure that those from underrepresented groups are adequately represented within internal party bodies.

The full text of the motion is available here.

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Farron: Hard Brexit would be an act of economic vandalism

Tim Farron has described the hard brexit the Government seems set to hurtle towards as an “act of economic vandalism.”

He has responded to reports over the last two days that leaving the single market and customs union would cost a massive £66 billion a year. From the Independent:

The leaked government document says: “The Treasury estimates that UK GDP would be between 5.4 per cent and 9.5 per cent of GDP lower after 15 years if we left the EU with no successor arrangement, with a central estimate of 7.5 per cent.”

It adds: “The net impact on public sector receipts – assuming no contributions to the EU and current receipts from the EU are replicated in full – would be a loss of between £38 billion and £66 billion per year after 15 years, driven by the smaller size of the economy.”

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said the leaked documents showed quitting the single market would wreck the economy.

“This is yet more proof that hard Brexit would be an act of sheer economic vandalism,” he said.

“The Liberal Democrats will stand up for Britain’s membership of the single market.

“We cannot stand by while this reckless, divisive and uncaring Conservative Government wrecks the UK economy.”

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Liz Leffman: If you elect me as your MP, I will champion NHS services

Liz Leffman has an impressive record of campaigning for better NHS services in the Witney area. When I was there two weeks ago, people were saying things like “Ah, she’s the one who saved the hospital in Chipping Norton” on the doorsteps.

In this campaign video, she talks about the changes she wants to see and how she will be a local champion for the NHS if she is elected MP next Thursday.

The Guardian has a good profile of the by-election with coverage of Nick Clegg’s visit yesterday.

Few in the party still carry a torch for the coalition years, but the enduring popularity of Cameron in this corner of Oxfordshire is something that the Lib Dems feel they might be able to capitalise on. The party is throwing vast resources into next Thursday’s byelection, shipping down legions of activists – 600 over the weekend and another 1,000 over the next week, according to party officials.

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Show me yours – and Labour doesn’t care

As the Snoopers’ Charter, sorry Investigatory Powers Bill, starts its final stage in the Lords today, have a look at this video from Liberty which gets over the intrusive nature of this illiberal measure.

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The 48%: The modern-day Cassandra?

History is written by the winners, so they say. Definitions of winning, however, adapt with historical context.

Take Brexit, for example. Right now it seems as though the 48%, and anyone else broadly sympathetic to the Remain cause, are being pushed to the margins by the brashly victorious Leave campaign. Called “sore losers” (as if this is a child’s football match or something else that barely matters), and told to stop being so bloody-minded and undemocratic, it may look as if anyone who voted Remain is soon to be consigned to the footnotes of future grammar school textbooks. Like Cassandra of Greek myth, given the power of foresight but cursed to always be unheard.

But if you think that, you’re highly likely to be proven wrong. In fact, it’s probable that none of us actually even need to do anything in particular to be able to say “I told you so” in years to come, for what that’s worth. And I don’t even suggest this out of some hard-faced certainty that the experts should have been listened to, or because I think the economy will crash, or because of any other plain-as-day prediction ignored before the vote.

With hindsight, we now understand that the EU In/Out camps are remarkably even in the UK. Almost 50/50 in fact, according to the referendum result. This means that, whoever had won the referendum, almost half the country would be currently prepping their pitchforks and flaming torches in readiness for the first thing to go wrong. 

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How to Address Concerns about Immigration

Every time I say something liberal about immigration or immigrants, people swarm to tell me that I’m being silly and idealistic and we have to respect people’s genuine, legitimate concerns.

Since they rarely say “these are my concerns” – there’s a lot of hand-waving and a lot of pre-emptive defensiveness about how not-racist they are – it’s difficult to figure out sometimes what the concerns are.

Sometimes the acceptably non-racist immigration concern is the “drain on infrastructure,” but the tide is already starting to shift on that one as people realize the infrastructure is underfunded by local and national governments rather than overused.

Sometimes the concern is about symbolic threats: hearing many languages on the bus, seeing a shelf of Polish food in the supermarket, Muslims celebrating their own holidays, and the general sense that the UK is not in control of its borders. That last point was made by shadow education secretary Angela Rayner as quoted by the Telegraph near the end of Labour’s conference: “Immigration is a good thing for the UK but what is not good is when people don’t know about what numbers we have. I think you do have to talk about those things. People raise that on the doorstep all the time and it is important that we deal with those concerns.”

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Politics between the extremes – some highlights

Nick Clegg’s account of the coalition and its aftermath is an insightful and in many places startlingly frank account. This is not a complete review, though do buy and read the book for yourself, but I’ll pick up a few of the issues raised.

clegg-book

Nick devotes a chapter to “the plumage of power” – looking at how a government anchored in the centre ground by Liberal Democrats ended up appearing from the outside merely to be run by unusually moderate Conservatives. One aspect of this was being seen with the trappings of power. The value was understood all along by Conservatives – because they live for this sort of thing. Speaking at the door of number 10, etc. There’s a fascinating contrast between the coalition DPM who had a veto on government policy but no real visible trappings – and, say, the US Vice President who is well adorned with plumage, but whose powers are ‘not worth a bucket of warm spit’.

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Please write to your MP – Parity of Esteem for Mental and Physical First Aid

Writing a blog on Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) as a 2015 General Election candidate set off a string of events. I was contacted by MHFA England CEO Poppy Jaman and we met to discuss her vision of parity of esteem in mental and physical first aid.

kirsten-johnson-norman-lamb

Several emails and months later, I met with Norman Lamb MP to ask him to consider how we could change the law so that health and safety legislation which referenced First Aid could include mental as well as physical health. Norman was enthusiastic about pursuing this, and wrote to the Department of Work and Pensions, asking for the government to look into amending current First Aid legislation.

Posted in Op-eds | 5 Comments

Nick Clegg challenges David Davis over Brexit

Nick Clegg has had a right go at David Davis over the lack of Parliamentary Scrutiny over Brexit. He questioned after Davis made a statement to the Commons.

From the BBC:

Former Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, now his party’s EU spokesman, says the Commons has a “rightful role of scrutiny”.

David Davis suggests that Mr Clegg “cannot tell the difference between scrutiny and micro-management” – to some degree of uproar in the House.

Labour MP Angela Eagle says this is “the first time I’ve ever heard Parliamentary sovereignty described as micro-management”.

His intervention was well received:

Afterwards, Nick tweeted:

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What Lib Dems have been doing on World Mental Health Day

Today is World Mental Health Day organised by the World Health Organisation. This year’s theme is around offering support to those in psychological distress – mental health first aid.

Norman Lamb has written for the Guardian arguing that there should be parity between physical and mental health in the workplace with employers being required to provide mental health first aid. He said that he had recently done a training course in mental health first aid.

Employers could find that investing in mental health support saves them money given that mental ill health accounts for 70 million days of sickness absence every year.

How can we possibly justify leaving the law as it is? So far as the NHS is concerned the government has committed to the principle of “parity of esteem” between physical and mental illness. Surely they must apply the same logic to the workplace.

Put simply, this is a call for every workplace to have trained mental health first-aiders just like they have physical first-aiders. A number of employers are taking action. WHSmith has committed to match the number of staff that are physical first-aiders with mental health first-aiders over the next 12 months.

There’s a growing momentum for change, and hundreds more businesses across a range of sectors are implementing mental health training for staff from Unilever and Crossrail to Channel 4. Employers have a duty of care to their workforce, and with the scale of mental issues in this country much more needs to be done. The government must act now to ensure every employee has access to mental health support at work.

In a tweet, Tim Farron called for the NHS to be given the resources it needs to tackle mental ill health:

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Tim Farron on Conservatives’ theft of Referendum result while IDS turns into Trump

Sunday Politics Tim Farron IDSYesterday on the Sunday Politics, Tim Farron and Iain Duncan Smith went head to head. The former Tory leader is no longer the quiet man. He spent much of the interview muttering over Tim, telling him he was talking “utter rubbish.” It was the sort of aggressive sneering that would be more at home at a Trump rally.

Despite all that, Tim did really well. He made his point that it would be a massive mistake to leave the single market. He said that it was vital that the eventual deal was put to the British people and cited Lord Kerr’s backing of that position. You can’t, he said, start off a process with democracy and end it with a stitch up. We didn’t vote to leave the single market.

He added that the Government had chosen to listen to the “siren voices of English nationalism” in the Tory Party and not the pragmatic wishes of business, accusing them of “theft of the result” to impose a hard brexit that nobody voted for.

Andrew Neil confronted him with the news that former Liberal Democrat peer Zahida Manzoor  had joined the Conservatives. Tim said that he found her decision peculiar but pointed to our 18 council gains and 20,000 members since June as evidence that the party was recovering.

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