Tim farron

The intrigue of the Liberal Democrats’ conference has centred on the party’s split personality. A Sunday Times/YouGov poll disclosed that as many as 50 per cent of Lib Dems believe that it was wrong to go into coalition in the first place, leading one to assume that only the small clique of ‘conservatives’ around Nick Clegg is keeping the Lib Dems in government. There is a still a strong feeling that going into coalition was the right thing to do for party and country. Lib-Dems who think otherwise, I’m told, “should seriously question [their] logic” because there was no alternative. However much that is true, Lib-Dems still miss opposition. One

For Lib Dem modernisers there are few more depressing sights than how conference reacts to a Tim Farron speech: he serves up social democratic red meat and they absolutely lap it up. Farron, the party president, delivered one anti-Tory jibe after another. He declared that the government would be an ‘absolute nightmare without’ the Liberal Democrats in it, boasted that Nick Clegg was ‘leading the opposition’ as well as being deputy Prime Minister and accused the Tories of believing it was ok for the super-rich not to pay tax. There were also a slew of attacks on ‘the reactionary Tory drivel’ that the Tories have supposedly sprouted since the riots.

If Nick Clegg has decided that he won’t run for re-election, what are the implications? Today’s Daily Mail serializes a book by Jasper Gerard about the party, where he claims Clegg told his wife Miriam that he’ll only do one term as Deputy Prime Minister. That makes sense. The Lib Dems will want to separate from the Tories before the next election, and that’ll probably mean choosing a new leader who can more plausibly attack Tories during the campaign. Clegg will doubtless have post-Downing Street job offers involving various forms of European statesmanship, a political afterlife where he can speak Spanish from podiums without being given funny looks. Given that the

There are, as James pointed out earlier, only five days to go until the AV referendum  — and that means both campaigns are priming their final appeals for our hearts, minds and votes. So just what will those appeals look like? Today has brought some indication. As Paul Waugh reveals over at PoliticsHome, the Yes campaign is planning to wheel Eddie Izzard — of course! — in front of the microphones. The comedian is going to take part in 16 events across the country this week. And as for the No campaign, ConservativeHome have pictures of their new poster campaign and promotional leaflet. It’s the latter that really tugs at

Politics has never really settled down since last year’s general election — but it still seems especially convulsive at the moment. Only a few weeks ago, Clegg was caught on camera joking about his and Cameron’s similarities. Only a few days ago, he was standing up, vigorously, for the coalition. Yet, now, both his rhetoric — and that of his party — has been dipped in acid and wielded against the Tories. And while there is some speculation about how much of the hostility is staged, and about which ministers actually mean it, the basic fact remains: the coalition is no longer a happy band, but increasingly a collection of

Judging by today’s reports, it’s fear and self-loathing in Lib Dem Land. And it’s not just that one of their Scottish candidates has quit the party in protest at its, ahem, “draconian policies” and “dictatorial style”. No, according to this insightful article by Melissa Kite and Patrick Hennessy in the Sunday Telegraph, there are more manoeuvrings going on than that. Here are some passages from it, by way of a summary: 1) Chris Huhne, waiting in the wings. “Mr Huhne, who ran Mr Clegg close in the last Lib Dem leadership election, has told colleagues privately that he would be interested in leading his party in the future.” 2) A

On any normal day, a missive from Tim Farron to George Osborne – urging him to axe the planned rise in fuel duty – would be striking enough. On a day when the Lib Dems finished sixth in a by-election, it has a whole lot more piquancy to it. I’m not saying that the Next Lib Dem Leader™ is trying to cause trouble, or even hastening to shore up support. He has, after all, been dutiful in defence of the coalition this morning, and he has been highlighting fuel costs for some time now. But Lib Dem backbenchers clearly have some demands for the government – and now’s the time

What a joy it is to watch Ed Miliband contort and twist so that he can offer a hand of friendship to the Lib Dems. It has been a three-act show, so far. First, during the Labour leadership contest, he described the Lib Dems as a “disgrace to the traditions of liberalism,” adding that, “I can see the death of the Liberal party to be honest”. Then, he said that he would actually work with those dying Liberals, but only if they ditched Nick Clegg first. And then today, in an interview with the Independent, he suggests that Clegg might be able to stay on, after all. As turnarounds go,

Today’s Lib Dem revelations are of the embarrassing, but not explosive, variety. David Heath, the deputy leader of the House, and Norman Baker, the transport minister, hypocritically say they are against tuition fees, despite having voted to let universities charge fees of up to £9,000. Baker also, crassly, compares himself to Helen Suzman, the anti-apartheid campaigner, working from within to change the system. But, beyond that, the remarks are what you’d expect a Lib Dem MP to say to a party supporter complaining about various Tory members of the government. I suspect Nick Clegg will be slightly more worried about Adrian Sanders, the MP for Torbay, issuing a broadside against

After Ed Miliband’s buttery overtures to the Lib Dems earlier, a response courtesy of the party president, Tim Farron. It offers, on the surface at least, a vicious rebuke to the Labour leader – and a staunch defence of what the coalition has achieved. Here it is in full: “Labour have just spent 13 years sucking up to Rupert Murdoch and George Bush – why would any sane progressive even give them a second glance? As part of the coalition government, Liberal Democrats have started fixing Labour’s economic mess, taking millions of people out of Income Tax and reforming British politics. Things Labour had 13 years to do but failed

Tim Farron is a name to remember. Farron has just been elected Lib Dem president and is widely regarded as the brightest hope of the party’s left. Farron is a political natural. He won his seat from a Tory in 2005 and from endless campaigning has turned into as near as you get to a Lib Dem safe seat. At Lib Dem party conference, Farron was a late replacement for Charles Kennedy at the pro-AV rally and delivered the best speech of the night.  At the annual conference Glee Club, a bizarre sing-song that is a throwback to the days when there were very few Liberal MPs, Farron rapped. It could have