Yesterday 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.