Moment those ‘nice’ Lib Dems showed how spiteful and smug they really are

Anyone who has studied the history of the Liberal Democrats knows that the party, which presents itself as decent and principled, is often quicker than its larger rivals to embrace skulduggery, dishonesty and treachery.

The odd thing is that, over the years, good and decent people have voted for the Lib Dems in the mistaken belief that the party is nice and principled. Some will be planning to do so again on June 8.

Despite the catastrophe of the 2015 general election, when the party was reduced to a rump in the Commons, some Remainers who voted Tory or Labour are contemplating giving the fanatically pro-eU Lib Dems another chance.

A Remainer friend of mine who has never previously plumped for the Lib Dems told me the other day that he is going to vote for them this time in order to teach Theresa May a lesson. There could be many thousands like him.

Anyone entertaining such thoughts should first recall the deceitfulness of the recent past — for example, the way in which nick Clegg and colleagues junked their solemn promise made during the 2010 election campaign to abolish tuition fees. Lured by the prospect of power in coalition with the Tories, they swiftly agreed to triple them.

yesterday, the mask fell again when the new leader, Tim Farron, was out campaigning in oxfordshire, where he was confronted by a Leave supporter called Malcolm Baker, a life-long Labour man who intends to vote Tory this time because he believes Mrs May is a strong leader.

Actually, whereas the plausible, baby-faced nick Clegg once persuaded some of us that he was a straight enough fellow, the more abrasive Farron instantly grated — at any rate with me — because of his aggressive, rat-tat-tat way of speaking.

At the Lib Dem party conference in 2011, the little bruiser accused the Thatcher government of ‘doing brutal and appalling things to this country with absolutely no mandate’. (Wasn’t it elected?) Those who had resisted the Lib Dems’ unsuccessful campaign to persuade us to accept the Alternative Vote system were dismissed as ‘evil so-andsos’ by Farron.

YeSTeRDAy

the garrulous pipsqueak was evidently aghast to be button-holed by an irate Mr Baker, who rightly accused him of ‘ running this country down’. I think he meant that while the Lib Dem leader is forever denigrating Mrs May and Brexit, he has nothing but sweet and supportive words for those european leaders who increasingly threaten us.

Farron asked Mr Baker in his condescending way whether he had any grandchildren, and was told he did. The Lib Dem leader retorted: ‘Are you proud that they will inherit a poorer, less powerful, less secure country?’

What an insufferably smug sense of superiority! The implication is that people such as Mr Baker who backed Leave are too stupid to realise that — in the patronising view of the Lib Dem leader — they voted in favour of a diminished Britain.

But, of course, they didn’t. They weighed the arguments (not the least of which was that by leaving the eU we would regain our sovereignty) and came to a reasoned conclusion.

How I warmed to Mr Baker for his pride that his grandchildren ‘will be coming out of europe, and that we will have our own destiny, and not have people telling us we are going to pay £100 billion to get out’. He speaks for many millions. It turns out he has been awarded an MBe for his charity fundraising. Quite a man.

Predictably, his show of independence didn’t go down well with the assembled Lib Dem activists, some of whom booed him, though to be fair to Farron he asked them to desist. one of them called Mr Baker a ‘f***ing idiot’ for disclosing that he would vote for Theresa May. The Lib Dem faithful can be surprisingly spiteful.

Tim Farron may assert that we will be poorer, less powerful and less secure, but he can’t know that this will be the case. one feels he almost wants Britain to end up on the skids for having had the effrontery to turn its back on his precious eU.

In recent days, the Lib Dem leadership has been reviving Project Fear, tossing around bogus claims with the same abandon as nick Clegg and George osborne and David Cameron did a year ago.

earlier this week, Clegg informed us that a ‘ triple whammy of higher inflation, lower business investment and lower net migration’ means that GDP is likely to be 2.4 per cent lower in 2021 than it would have been without the eU referendum. He predicted that after five years the public finances will be £59 billion awry.

This is the same nick Clegg, by the way, who opined in november 2013 that those people who wanted Britain to withdraw from the eU were ‘unpatriotic’.

Do these people never have any humility? Doesn’t it ever occur to them that their apocalyptic forecasts were so wildly adrift a year ago that prudence might dictate they should show a little restraint before reverting to the tired old script?

TRUe

to form, the Lib Dems propose disregarding the result of last year’s result by holding a second referendum. What would happen if they didn’t get the outcome they want? Why, they could call another vote!

Don’t forget that in 2008 the party campaigned actively for a referendum on europe. They even got up a petition. They didn’t say there would have to be a re-run if they didn’t get the result they hoped for.

Is it really possible that this untrustworthy and inconsistent party with its condescending leadership will win many more seats? It’s certainly getting an enormous amount of airtime on the BBC, disenchanted as Auntie is with Corbyn’s hard- Left Labour Party. Ukip, which won 60 per cent more votes than the Lib Dems in 2015, gets much less attention.

My guess is that the Lib Dems will make some gains in its old battlegrounds such as Bath, Twickenham, Cheltenham and even oxford West and Abingdon, where Farron was electioneering yesterday when he encountered the spirited Mr Baker.

But with the possible exception of Truro and Falmouth, they seem unlikely to win back many, if any, constituencies in their former heartlands in Devon and Cornwall, where the pro-Leave vote was generally higher than in the country as a whole. Why should Brexiteers switch

en masse to a party whose hierarchy clearly holds them in contempt, and is hatching plans to overturn the pro- Leave outcome of the referendum?

When it comes to it, I hope that Tory and Labour Remainers who are thinking of defecting to the Lib Dems will reconsider, as they examine the motives of Farron and Clegg and the rest of the gang.

It is, of course, perfectly legitimate to rue the outcome of the referendum. But it has to be honoured. It can’t be reversed. Those who conspire to do so aren’t worthy of being called democrats.

And in always siding with the increasingly hard-line european Commission and antagonistic leaders such as France’s President Hollande against the British Government, Farron and Clegg risk crossing the line from principled opposition towards something uncomfortably close to treachery.