It’s the first day of conference season and the Liberal Democrats are keen to make the most of it. This year their slogan is ‘For a fair deal’. But is renegotiating the Brexit deal really what they’re all about? Ahead of this weekend’s conference Sir Ed Davey was keen to put such talk to bed, claiming that rejoining the EU was ‘off the table’ and that his party wanted to instead focus on issues of greater concern to the public.
Not all of his front bench seem to have got the message though. Speaking on the first day of the party’s annual conference in Bournemouth, the Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman Layla Moran told a fringe event: ‘We want to rejoin. We want, as part of it, to get back into the single market. We recognise that, in order to do that, we have to do stuff before, to get that relationship. How do we talk about it in a way that doesn’t push people away, so where is that sweet spot?’ Perhaps, er, being honest about your intentions might be a start?
Last time the Lib Dems tried to make EU membership the front and centre of an election campaign, they got creamed with leader Jo Swindon even managing to lose her seat. Perhaps Moran ought to heed the words of Lord Newby, the party’s leader in the House of Lords, who told the same discussion: ‘If we put Europe first and foremost, people will think we are mad.’ Quite…
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