Tim Farron just provided the perfect reminder of everything that’s wrong with the Liberal Democrats

Last Updated: February 6, 2017By

Tim Farron.

What Liberal Democrats propose while out of power and what they do when in power are almost polar opposites.

Farron has launched a scathing attack on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, telling voters in Stoke: “How can you have a progressive alliance with somebody who’s not progressive?”

Whatever your views on Jeremy Corbyn, he certainly has more claim to be progressive than the leader of the Liberal Democrats – a man who refused to vote in favour of equal marriage.

Farron also avoided answering the question: do you think gay sex is a sin? That should be a very simple one to answer for a real progressive. And there was also that time when his official Twitter account promoted gay conversion therapy. Farron later claimed his account had been ‘hacked’.

It is beyond farce for a man who doubts the right of gay people to marry, and questions whether gay sex is sinful, to dress himself up as a pioneering progressive. There is nothing liberal about homophobia.

There is a reason the Liberal Democrats were obliterated in the 2015 general election. It was because when they were called to put their liberal words into action, and they reneged on the deal. Instead, they propped up the Conservative government and advanced its nakedly illiberal agenda.

Source: Tim Farron just provided the perfect reminder of everything that’s wrong with the Liberal Democrats | The Canary

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7 Comments

  1. Simon February 7, 2017 at 8:35 am - Reply

    The Liberal Democrats were a disgrace in coalition with the Conservatives and, thanks to people like Nick Clegg’s and Danny Alexander’s astonishing ineptitude, allowed horrors like the Bedroom Tax and Universal Credit to be implemented and propagated, frustrating every effort by Labour and other parties to stop them or water them down.

    However the Liberal Democrats have an unequivocal and clear position in respect to Europe, which will attract large numbers of pro-European voters no matter what went on in the past, especially as pretty much every one of the Liberal Democrat villains lost their seats in 2015.

    The danger is that the Lib Dems will attract a huge number of protest votes from pro-European voters and general voters who can’t bring themselves to vote Labour, for whatever reason, who are dissatisfied with Conservative foreign and/or domestic policy. The Liberal Democrats are fast becoming a “non of the above” sink for the protest vote.

    • Mike Sivier February 7, 2017 at 10:08 am - Reply

      And how does the rebellion against their own policy by several of the Liberal Democrats’ remaining MPs, at the second reading of the Article 50 Bill last week, fit into your narrative?

      • Simon February 7, 2017 at 1:57 pm - Reply

        Because the overwhelming majority of voters remain blithely unaware of the minutiae of political policy and vote based on a general broad brush stroke kind of perception of what a party is and what it wants to do. Probably most men and women on the street wouldn’t know who Tim Farron was or what his religious persuasions encourage him to believe or cleave to personally but will know the the Liberal Democrats are the pro-European flip side of UKIP.

        Besides just because people believe something that doesn’t mean that they particularly want to convert others to that viewpoint. Whatever Farron believes as far as I know there is no official Liberal Democrat policy that can be classed as homophobic, anti-gay, or anti-LGBT, or whatever. Nor, as far as I am aware, do the Liberal Democrats want to roll back any legislation which permits gay marriage and current gay rights.

        People harbour all sorts of weird unpleasant beliefs and behaviours, based on religion conviction, which I think are entirely mistaken and wrong, e.g., insisting on consuming only Kosher or Halal meat products, which I abhor because of the cruelty involved when slaughtering livestock, but don’t want to impose such strictures on those outside their own religion or in the population generally. Farron isn’t a minister, pastor or clergyman but a politician and one assumes will behave and conduct himself in a secular fashion as an MP at the dispatch box rather than in a religious manner as some kind of preacher, officiate or similar in a pulpit.

        Kind of:

        “And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Mark 12:17

        That kind of jazz.

        Besides: It is 100% impossible for the Liberal Democrats to form a government alone, or, most likely, form any significant part as part of some coalition cobbled together with another party post-2020. People know this but may very well vote Lib Dem as a protest, pyrrhically, as the most pro-European option available and voting for which a slightly better choice than washing their hands and abstaining from the ballot altogether.

        • Mike Sivier March 28, 2017 at 10:59 pm - Reply

          Your argument is fatally flawed. We have seen in the examples of many others that people will always act in accordance with their personal beliefs, in all parts of their lives. Otherwise, after all, they would be hypocrites. Right?
          So you’re arguing that Mr Farron is a hypocrite. He is, after all, a member of the hypocrite party that formed a coalition with the Conservatives and turned its back on so many of the ideals it had claimed to hold until that moment.
          And that, of course, puts the seal on your final claim. The Liberal Democrats are, after all, happy to prop up any other political organisation as long as they get a chance to have ministerial cars of their own.
          They are very dangerous in that respect and it is highly unwise of anybody to vote for them.

  2. Roland Laycock February 7, 2017 at 10:14 am - Reply

    What a prat more rubbish from the mouth of a little tory

  3. casalealex February 7, 2017 at 10:27 am - Reply

    In 2002, a secret Liberal Democrat document came to light – produced by the Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors – in which local activists were urged to “be wicked, act shamelessly, stir endlessly” in order to win elections.

    In fact, ask anyone who’s been involved in local politics and they’ll tell you Liberal Democrat activists are the most infamous for playing dirty, using underhand methods and being utterly ruthless.

    Exactly as they turned out to be nationally in their coalition with the Tories.

  4. Barry Davies February 7, 2017 at 10:59 am - Reply

    Clegg sold the lib dems down the river for a title of deputy Prime Minister the nearest he would have ever got to the real thing, at a time when they looked like they had good ideas and could help, farron on the other hand has done even more damage to the lib dems than Clegg did, if the lib dems want to have any chance in the next election they need to replace farron sooner rather than later. Behaving like a petulant child because he supported the wrong side in the referendum does him no favours, and has people asking why they don’t take the dems bit off and go back to pretending they are liberal.

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