Comment ‘Only the Lib Dems can stop the Tory party now’
now it’s nobody. So who’s to say it can’t be the liberals again?”
He was speaking on Wednesday afternoon after Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn came under fire for failing to capitalise on the Conservative Government’s dramatic U-turn over National Insurance increases for the self-employed.
Chancellor Philip Hammond announced that the measure, revealed in his Budget less than a week previously, would be scrapped.
But critics claimed Mr Corbyn failed to land blows on the Government during his weekly question and answer session with the Prime Minister on Wednesday lunchtime.
Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland MP Labour MP Tom Blenkinsop tweeted a video of a footballer missing an open goal. And he said on Twitter: “Serious questions about holding the Govt to account need to be asked.”
Other Labour MPs compared Mr Corbyn’s performance unfavourably to former leadership contender Yvette Cooper, who mocked the Tories when she had the chance to ask her own question to the Prime Minister.
Birmingham Yardley Labour MP Jess Phillips Tweeted: “Boom! That’s a question”. Ms Phillips, who previously backed Ms Cooper in the Labour leadership contest, added: “I don’t like to say I told you so, but....”
Mr Farron said that the Government’s decision to announce the U-turn just before Prime Minister’s Questions showed that they did not take Mr Corbyn seriously.
“The Government thinks they can do a U-turn with impunity,” he said.
Only the Liberal Democrats could stop the Tories winning a majority at elections to come, he said.
“If we make small progress then we are left with a Tory government for the next 25 years.
“If our recovery is, confident, good but slowish then the Tories are in power for 25 years.
“It needs to be rapid, because the only path to the Tories losing a majority is through the Liberal Democrats now.
“They can’t lose seats to the SNP, they’ve only got one left.
“Nobody, not even in the Labour Party, think they [Labour] are going to make any gains off the Tories.
“Which means the only route to the Tories losing in 2020, or whenever it is, is through the Liberal Democrat path.
“We need to come back big if the Tories are to lose.”
Labour critics might point out that Mr Farron’s Liberal Democrats were part of a Conservative-led Government between 2010 and 2015.
But he said the Liberal Democrats’ long-term goal was to lead a government of their own.
“We are of the view we want to replace the Tory Party,” he said.
“We need to move into Labour’s space so there can be a decent progressive opposition party. Then we want to beat the Tories.”
This may appear a remote possibility, as the Lib Dems have only nine MPs out of 650 in the Commons.
But he said: “I am not so unselfaware that I don’t know that with only nine MPs we are stretching things a bit to say that.
“But the other UK wide opposition party, with 200-plus MPs, is now beyond fixable. Is now in the hands of an organisation that wants it to be a hard left protest group.
“That’s fine if that’s what they want to do, but we discovered, shortly after the First World War, what happens when you miss your vocation as a party, you stop standing up for the people you should stand up for.
“You get replaced by somebody else.”
Nobody, not even in the Labour Party, think they [Labour] are going to make any gains off the Tories. Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron