In 2014, the former Liberal Democrat minister Jeremy Browne challenged his party in an interview in the Times: “If you didn’t exist why would it be necessary to invent you?” That challenge has been picked up enthusiastically by Tim Farron, the former Lib Dem president, who is widely expected to become the next leader. As Mr Farron asks in this interview with the New Statesman, “Do you want the party that is second in the next coalition agreement to be some separatist or nationalist wrapped in a Union Jack or a Saltire? Or do you want the next party that is the junior party in that coalition to be sane, sensible, moderate and progressive?”
Asked by David Cameron in 2010 about her experience of coalition government, Angela Merkel said: “The little party always gets smashed!” And so it has proved for the Lib Dems. The party has been reduced to barely 2,000 councillors, a 20-year low. It was routed in the 2014 European elections, losing ten of its 11 MEPs. In Scotland, where it has 11 Westminster seats, the party is more loathed even than the Tories. On 4 March, the Lib Dems again fell to 5 per cent in a YouGov opinion poll, a repeat of their worst showing in 25 years.
Content from our partners
