Tim Farron’s fearsome foursome: May, Le Pen, Trump, Putin What can Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats, do to get attention? He had an idea for the party’s conference in York today: suggest that the world is in the grip of a fearsome foursome: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Marine Le Pen… and Theresa May. He claimed that have the same traits in common: being “aggressive, nationalistic, anti-Nato, anti-EU. It is the post-war internationalist consensus unravelling in real time. Winston Churchill’s vision for a world that achieves peace through trade, common values and shared endeavour evaporating before our eyes.”
Clegg: Bring on the election. The Lib Dems couldn’t do any worse BBC1’s Sunday Politics, Nick Clegg – who saw his party’s MPs evaporate before his eyes last year – said that he would welcome an early general election, not least because the Liberal Democrats ‘couldn’t do much worse than we did last time’. When asked about his old cabinet colleague George Osborne’s new job as Editor of the Evening Standard, Clegg replied that Osborne was taking a lot on’ and ‘it was probably a little bit too much’. He added that he was ‘waiting in nervous anticipation’ about what the new editor would do with his regular column in the paper.
Blair: Labour should be the Remain party Tony Blair told Andrew Marr that Labour should still bear the torch for Remain should the government fail to deliver on Brexit. While he grudgingly accepted that Theresa May had a mandate for Brexit, but said Labour should agitate for the UK remain in a “reformed” European Union if the polls suggest buyers’ remorse on Brexit.
Nicola Sturgeon: still no answer to that tricky currency question Appearing on Sophy Ridge on Sky, Nicola Sturgeon admitted that she still has no answer to the currency question. The decision was being examined by the SNP’s Growth Commission which will publish a report in the next few months. She stated that ‘the starting point of our consideration is that Scotland will use the pound’ and that she wanted Scots to make ‘an informed choice’ about their future.
Ruth Davidson: Scots do not want another referendum Speaking on the Andrew Marr Show, the Scottish Tory leader said: “I don’t think you can have an independence referendum again if you don’t have public consent for it, and the people of Scotland don’t want this. We see another poll today, to add to the many dozen that we’ve seen since June of last year, that show that the majority of people in Scotland don’t want this…here are people right across Scotland, many, many thousands of them, that are so thankful for the prime minister to say let’s take a pause on this.”
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