Gallant little Tim was as chipper as a kiddies’ beach entertainer
AND in other news, Lib Dem leader Tim Farron made his end-of-conference speech. Mr Farron is a gallant little fellow, endearingly chipper, a street preacher defying persistent drizzle. His party is down to eight MPs, several of them duffers, and the Lib Dems’ national poll ratings are riding lower than a builder’s underpants. Yet still he refuses to be glum.
This chap makes Norman Wisdom look pessimistic. He is Popeye’s baby brother, a barking chihuahua, a prophet on a pogo stick. If the Lib Dem thing ever goes wrong he’d make a wonderful kiddies’ entertainer on Morecambe beach.
He wandered on stage in Brighton yesterday afternoon giving the audience a beaming thumbs-up, walking almost crablike while he looked the activists in the eye. it looked rather uncomfortable.
Then he started clapping – while they clapped him. Clap-along-a-Tim! Give him a tambourine and he’ll soon have us waving our hands to some grisly rendition of ‘Shine Jesus Shine!’
‘I’m now the longest-serving political party leader in Britain,’ he declared. And it’s true. Farage and Cameron and that poor Green woman with the brainfade have all gone, while Jeremy Corbyn was elected later than Mr Farron last year. For good measure, he noted that he had outlasted England football manager Roy Hodgson and Bake’s Off’s Mel and Sue.
There were a few more homey references – we heard much about his grandparents – but this speech was largely a calculated pitch to Blairites in the Labour Party. Join the Lib Dems, he was saying, or at least help us to oppose the Tories. More than once he seemed to accept that the Conservatives are likely to be in power for the next 25 years. I doubt that will happen but if their opponents keep saying it, the chances will increase.
‘I am a great loser,’ he said. Don’t doubt me. He really did say that. It came after an opening moan about the Brexit result. ‘I am a great loser. I have had loads of practice.’ He was a fan of Blackburn Rovers, too, you see.
The other function of the speech, apart from the pitch to Labour moderates, was to wail about the EU referendum. Senior Lib Dems have not come to terms with the June 23 result and Mr Farron said he was still ‘devastated’ that the electorate told Brussels to get lost.
‘I’m still utterly convinced Britain should remain in Europe,’ he told his delegates, seconds after saying that he ‘respected’ the majority who voted Leave. It seems hard to square those two positions. He accused other parties of being short-termist but this focus on opposing Brexit and calling for a second referendum looks nakedly party-political. He is hoping fill a gap on the Centre-Left.
HE criticised New Labour MPs Yvette Cooper, Caroline Flint and Chuka Umunna for retiring from the political frontline. This was accompanied by some would-be butch nodding, as if to say ‘I’m bad, yeah, I’m bad’. He claimed that Mr Corbyn thought ‘winning elections was a bourgeois distraction – unless it’s his own leadership election’.
‘Britain needs a strong opposition,’ he continued, ‘and the Liberal Democrats will be that strong opposition.’ At this, a single woman in the crowd cried ‘yes!’ The rest of the crowd chewed on their gums and wondered how much longer it would be before they could slip away for a nice squirt of Sanatogen.
He was given two mid-speech ovations, first when he poured his all into a plea for a more generous government response to the refugee crisis in the eastern Mediterranean. The second came when he imagined youngsters in 20 years’ time asking today’s generation why pro-EU supporters did not do more to ally and to fight the Conservatives.
‘As we stand on the edge of those two horrific realities, Brexit and a Tory stranglehold on Britain, the biggest risk is that you do not join us,’ he hollered in his husky, staccato voice. Well, at least he tried.