Tim farron

Today should have been a good PMQs for Jeremy Corbyn. He had the chance to denounce Donald Trump and embarrass Theresa May over his actions, as Prime Minister she is—obviously—constrained in what she can say about the US president. But May had come well prepared and ended up besting Corbyn. She hit at his fundamental weakness, when she declared ‘he can lead a protest, I’m leading the country’. Perhaps, the most substantive moment of the session came when Corbyn asked for a guarantee that the NHS wouldn’t be opened up to US companies as part of a US / UK trade deal. May replied, ‘The NHS is not for sale’.

Perversity is a much undervalued British trait, much more redolent of our real psyche than queuing, drinking tea or being tolerant of foreigners and homosexuals — all things for which we are better renowned. Seeing Dunkirk as a victory was magnificently perverse. So, too, was electing a Labour government in 2005 shortly after we had invaded a sovereign country and created a civil war. For ‘perversity’ I suppose you could read ‘complexity’, although the two often amount to the same thing. Our reactions to stuff are never as straightforward as they should be — they are complex and therefore can seem perverse. And so it is right now. For three

Pull yourselves together, you wusses. It’s a minor readjustment of our tariff arrangements we’re talking about, not an epidemic or a foreign invasion or an asteroid strike. Not that anyone would guess it from the apocalyptic vocabulary you’re using. ‘A hard Brexit,’ says Keir Starmer for Labour, ‘would be catastrophic for our economy, living standards, jobs and future prosperity’. Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, agrees it would be ‘economically disastrous’. The CBI calls it ‘very negative’. Sound familiar? We became accustomed to such over-the-top language during the referendum campaign. The very act of voting Leave, we were told, would cause an immediate recession. Unemployment would surge and the stock

During the coalition years, Lib Dem conferences were well-attended events with many businesses, too, opting to exhibit. However, since the party went from 57 seats to eight in the 2015 general election, they have struggled to maintain their allure. So, perhaps brains at Lib Dem HQ can be forgiven for attempting to capitalise on Sarah Olney winning the Richmond Park by-election. The party is now marketing its upcoming Spring Conference with the line: ‘Come and Meet our New MP’. Alas Mr S suspects it may take more than one new MP to put the party back on the map.

It’s no surprise that the Tories held their seat overnight in the Witney by-election. Yet what seems remarkable (at least on the face of it) is the extent of the swing back towards the Lib Dems. The party saw its share of the vote jump from seven per cent two years ago to nearly a third of the vote this time around. That pushed the party’s candidate, Liz Leffman, into second place and has got Tim Farron excited. The Lib Dem leader went as far as saying the result shows the ‘Liberal Democrats are back in the political big time’. That’s not quite the case yet. After all, this is

Tim Farron’s hardest task in his conference speech today was convincing people to actually listen. A test of how successful he was will be how soon into the 6pm news tonight he pops up on screen (following Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s reported split, the signs don’t look good). So what did Farron do to try and get people to sit up? Banging the anti-Brexit drum was one of his main tactics. Farron promised… ‘Not a re-run of the referendum, not a second referendum, but a referendum on the terms of the as-yet-unknown Brexit deal’ The Lib Dem leader did, to be fair, do his best to empathise with those who

That Theresa May ‘won’ Prime Minister’s Questions today, there is no doubt. Tory backbencher Simon Hoare said it was ‘game, set and match’ and few are likely to disagree with that summation of what took place in the Commons. Jeremy Corbyn was repeatedly left floundering throughout by a politician who showed that she means business. As James Forsyth says, the Labour benches looked even more fed-up than usual upon their realisation of just how effective an adversary May will be. But from the woman who famously coined the ‘nasty party’ term about the Tories, was there also a part of that moniker on display from the despatch box this afternoon? It

This week, Mr S made his way to Boisdale to watch his Spectator comrade Rod Liddle give the key address at the fifth annual Freedom Dinner. Hosted by Forest, Liddle stayed on-message at the libertarian bash — speaking freely on a range of topics from his Labour suspension to the Guardian‘s Comment is Free section. Here is the speech in full: Many thanks for inviting me here tonight. I have been told that I was picked to deliver this address from among a very large list of people, solely because I have children and am a mother. This gives me great empathy and understanding and also the right to amend my CV whenever the

The award for most pathetic remark of the week goes to Tim Farron who earlier released a press statement saying this: ‘Just 13 months after the last election the Conservatives have plunged the UK into chaos. It is simply inconceivable that Theresa May should be crowned Prime Minister without even having won an election in her own party, let alone the country. There must be an election. The Conservatives must not be allowed to ignore the electorate, their mandate is shattered and lies in ruins.’ Apart from the long-established principle that we do not automatically have a general election when one Prime Minister resigns and another from their party is elected

Momentum in the ‘Leave’ campaign seems to be growing after Brexit took the lead in two polls out today. There are, however, still several weeks until the actual day of the EU referendum and the gap between the two sides remains marginal (four per cent). But ‘Remain’ still seem shaken by these polls. Here’s how they spent the day fighting back: David Cameron said Brexit would put a bomb under Britain’s economy, going on to say that ‘the worst thing is, we would have lit the fuse ourselves’: The PM was backed up Lib Dem leader Tim Farron. In a joint event, Farron said the argument for ‘Leave’ was built

Although Jeremy Corbyn did his best to press David Cameron on a range of issues at today’s PMQs, perhaps the most notable aspect of his performance was what he didn’t say. A number of commentators were surprised that the Labour leader did not ask Cameron to apologise for the extremism remarks he made about Sadiq Khan, who is now London’s mayor. Happily, one party leader was happy to put this to the Prime Minister — even if they weren’t best placed to ask it: Tim Farron: I heard the Prime Minister on two occasions this afternoon congratulate the new Mayor of London Sadiq Khan — and I would like to

Of course no Budget announcement would be complete without some customary ‘banter’ from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. With George Osborne’s leadership chances seen to be dwindling, he did his best to show that he had got his ‘mojo’ back. Clearly free of any guilty feelings over how things turned out for the Liberal Democrats in the General Election, Osborne couldn’t resist a taking a pop at the beleaguered party as he discussed his plan for pensions: ‘For the past year, we’ve consulted widely on whether we should make compulsory changes to the pension system but it was clear there was no consensus. Indeed the former pensions minister, the Liberal Democrat Steve Webb said

The Liberal Democrats’ track record with female party activists has suffered in recent years after Lord Rennard was accused of sexual harassment. While the party have done their best since then to deal with the claims against the Lib Dem peer, they now face accusations of ‘gendered abuse’. Steerpike understands that one of the party’s rising stars has stepped down from her role on the Federal Executive — the governing board of the Liberal Democrats — claiming that the party is not currently a safe place for women of colour. Kavya Kaushik has written a post on her personal blog explaining her reasons for quitting the party. In this she criticises the Lib Dems, accusing

Last week brought into focus how Labour is in complete and utter disarray. After the Home Secretary’s statement on the draft Investigatory Powers Bill, Andy Burnham wholeheartedly agreed with the government on the need for extra powers for spy chiefs. Then, about five days later, a letter was released by Burnham’s office saying that after closer inspection, he had a couple of ‘concerns’. Whatever you think of the Conservatives, they at least have a principled position on this: anything the spy agencies want, they get — regardless of the privacy implications. The Liberal Democrats on the other hand strongly believe that our agencies must make the case for new powers and

There’s a hard, hard mood out there among the public and I don’t think our newspapers get it at all. Could it be that the general populace are now more cynical than their journalists? At Tim Farron’s closing speech to his Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth last week, I sat through nearly an hour of one of the biggest cartloads of sanctimonious tosh it’s been my fate to endure in decades. And who do you suppose was lapping this up as avidly as any misty-eyed Lib Dem conference-goer? The hardened hacks, the sketchwriters, analysts and reporters. The press are old-fashioned: they love this emotional stuff. But the 21st-century public have

Ukip is gathering for its autumn conference in Doncaster, with Nigel Farage delivering the keynote speech later today. Unlike last year’s shindig, which saw the defection of Mark Reckless from the Tories, this year’s conference is likely to be less eventful — for one thing, the party has failed to grow its presence in Westminster. Even its members appear to be demotivated — the Telegraph reports that attendance is ‘significantly low’ and has offered cut-price tickets to entice Kippers to come along. A party spokesman acknowledged: ‘Last year conference was straight after a big election victory for Ukip so it’s not wildly surprising that numbers are down’ Now that an In-Out referendum is on

Tim Farron’s speech to the Lib Dem conference seems to have gone down well with those in the hall, which probably means that it did the trick, given this was his first conference as leader and the party’s first conference since its defeat. But given Farron wants to rebuild his party by appealing to those who no longer feel that Labour is their home, or those who worry that the Tories are going a bit further than they’d like, his speech wasn’t quite as effective as it could have been. Sure, he delivered it well – particularly when he was talking about housing and the refugee crisis, where he became