In just under two hours, Tim takes to the stage with representatives from 6 other parties for the tv debate. It’s the one and only time during the election that we will see all 7 parties represented in the one debate.
Theresa May has bottled it, which is no surprise as we have seen how awful she is when she’s unscripted or when something happens that she’s not expecting. That moment with Kathy in OXWAB showed that she has no ability to listen to what she is being told or to properly empathise with people.
Jeremy Corbyn is showing up, which you have to give him credit for. He has a big job to convince people that he could be PM in just over a week’s time. It will be interesting to see what his line on Scottish independence is tonight. It has changed several times over the past few days, much to the discomfiture of Scottish Labour. He seemed to suggest that he would be happy as PM to talk to the SNP about having a referendum. This will go down like a bucket of cold sick in Edinburgh South where Labour’s only MP Ian Murray is trying to defend his seat from both Tory and SNP onslaughts. The Tories won’t win, but they could stop him – and if they don’t think Labour will stop a second independence referendum, it does Ian Murray no good whatsoever.
Corbyn is also vulnerable to attack from Tim Farron, who will be after the moderate Labour Remain voters who are not, in the main, Corbyn fans. We can expect Tim to be reminding the audience that Corbyn whipped his MPs to oppose right to stay and membership of the single market in the Article 50 Bill and just stood and waved Theresa May towards the cliff edge.
Tim needs to present our unique position across the UK – against Scottish independence and pro a vote on the Brexit deal. He needs to debunk this nonsense we hear from the Tories about them needing a massive majority to help them in the Brexit negotiations. She wants a large majority so she can do what she likes without scrutiny. It is not in the interests of the British people to let that happen. He needs to show that the SNP have a not so hidden agenda so they can’t be trusted.
He needs to look like the grown up in the room who can be relied upon to deliver that strong opposition to Theresa May.
The SNP have been bringing up the coalition everywhere they are threatened by us. He needs to make sure he doesn’t get bogged down in all of that and look forward.
Tim also needs to make those moderate Tories who liked the coalition feel a bit queasy. He needs to push Amber Rudd on the Dementia Tax and school meals and NHS and he needs to do it in a way that gets him noticed,
In a 7 way debate over 90 minutes, he’s going to have a very short time to get his points across. He’s going to have to make every word count and make sure he’s telling our story and not anybody else’s.
We will of course be following the debate. I can actually watch this one. If you are on social media, use the hashtags #IagreewithTIm and #bbcdebate. There are graphics to share too. If you are a party member, you will already have had them emailed.
So, 7:30 pm, BBC1. See you there.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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5 Comments
I think Farron needs to not just paint the Lib Dems as a pro-EU version of Labour. I also think in general the party was right to rule out coalition but should support whoever is the largest party choosing the Prime Minister. Otherwise all these reports of a hung parliament are going to scare voters away from the Lib Dems because they won’t know who we will back in a confidence motion.
If the party is seen to favour either May or Corbyn for PM then it will badly damage the party amongst all the other party’s voters. We need to do kind of what the EU parliament did and commit that the largest party has the right to pick the leader.
I hope he asks the (probably next Tory leader, whether they win or not) why when they are likely to be spending over £700 billion – they won’t details on what and from who! Surely no one should vote for a blank cheque!
Caron, I think you have summed up the awful problem the party has at this time. Peoples memories are not short and normally a political party can take 7 -10 years to recover from an electoral mauling, like we had 2013 – 2015. The election is far, far too early for us and worse still we seem to have gone into it without realising that as a very small fourth or fifth party in the Commons we do not really count, hence little or no media coverage. Really Farron is going into the debate with his hands coalition and Tuition fees tied. He still virtually unknown by many, that may help him. He starts from a zero base with that group. Why he did not lead a daily policy briefing like Labour I do not know. There will have to be very serious questions asked on June 9th.
If we survive with 5 MPs we will be doing well, 10 like in YouGov this morning a sort of dream.
I am afraid that the first words that popped into my head when I read the headline were “A bloody Miracle.”
Like everyone else my heart sank when this Election was called. My opinion is that we were on course to make a full recovery & pull ahead of Labour by 2020 but we are still too small to force our way into the headlines of the media. We cant really expect Tim to change things with his 13 minutes tonight.
On the bright side, we do seem to be recovering a little in the Polls.
No idea how much of an effect the debate will have, but Tim put in a good show and he’s built on his performance from the previous debate. His closing words were spot on.