The Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron has ruled out any form of coalition with the Tories or Labour after the general election as he sets out a bold ambition to attract enough Remain voters to form the main opposition party in parliament.
In a dramatic shift of strategy for a party that entered coalition with the Conservatives in 2010 in the “national interest”, Farron said in an interview with the Observer that there will be “no deal, no deal with anybody” under any circumstances.
He insisted that both the Tories and Labour were intent on driving through a hard Brexit, which would include taking the UK out of the single market, and that his party had a duty to offer a distinct alternative, including a policy that would keep open a possibility of the UK staying in the EU.
“There is no way we can countenance any kind of arrangement or coalition with the Conservative party and likewise with the Labour party led by Jeremy Corbyn,” Farron said. “He [Corbyn] accepted hard Brexit, he voted for it. He enabled it. It has put us in the situation we are now in.”
You can read the full article here, and there is a full interview with Tim Farron in tomorrow’s Observer here.
* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
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4 Comments
I’d also add that this is not a straightforward one.
Allying with Labour (or making an even broader progressive coalition) has substantiail pros and cons, and so does refusing point blank to make alliances.
So it is clearly not black and white.
EXCELLENT article! I’m very heartened to see this article, because there is a perception that the Liberal Democrats are bought-and-paid ‘Humanitarian Moderates’ with no critical thinking.
I think Liberal Democrats who are non-interventionists, or perhaps even intervention-skeptics (depending on the boundaries), should systematically organise, in order to work for a genuinely progressive foreign policy consensus.
The usual insincere cant and jargon about being ‘outward-looking’ would no doubt have justified the British Empire in the eyes of some.
The choice between belligerent and highly zero-sum activities versus ‘isolationism’ and parochialism is a false choice.
Being outward-looking, if it means anything at all, should mean trading with other folk, encouraging educational exchanges and the flourishing of the arts and sports and sciences.
This lesson, ‘we’ are slow to learn.
Sorry, I meant to post this under another article; the foreign policy one.
Re: “national interest”
I think more can be made of this angle, with Brexit it is clear, from May’s initial approach namely try and avoid either Parliamentary or public scrutiny, that it is in the national interest for there to be an effective opposition.