Murnaghan Interview with Tim Farron, MP, Leader of the Liberal Democrats, 20.09.15

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, what a difference an election makes.  This time last year the Lib Dems had 56 MPs and a firm influence in government, now there are just eight of them left and you could be forgiven for thinking their party conference in Bournemouth this weekend would be a rather sorry affair.  Wrong, according to their slogan, ‘The fight-back has begun’.  I’m joined now by the party’s new leader, Tim Farron, a very good morning to you Mr Farron and as I said there, it’s like May never happened.  You have been relentlessly upbeat talking about your thousands of new members, how well you are doing in council by-elections, your ambitions seem to know no bounds.  Am I looking at the next Prime Minister in 2020?  

TIM FARRON: I think that the dreadful result we had on May 7th clearly triggered something amongst many people in Britain, a sense of understanding of what liberalism meant.  It means standing up for human rights, it means making sure that we don’t have our internet freedoms breached, our privacy breached, it means standing up for affordable homes and not selling off housing association properties.  It also means having social justice and economic credibility and I think people felt a sense of grievance post the election and felt inspired that the Liberal cause in Britain mustn’t be lost and so 20,000 people have joined us and in the 27 years our party has existed this is the biggest conference ever with more new members attending than ever before and you very fairly just set out the fact that we have made more council gains than anybody else since May 7th and there is a great spirit here.  That doesn’t change the fact that we have got an enormous job to do to rebuild ourselves but of course the development over the last couple of weeks has changed the landscape of British politics giving the Liberal Democrats their biggest opportunity perhaps for a generation.  

DM: You are within a whisker though of the old false consciousness argument, given that we’ve just had a general election at which your party got trounced, you’d be the first to admit that, you seem to be saying that the electorate now realise they got it wrong.  

TIM FARRON: No, I think that’s not fair but I think it is true to say that many people who have understandably lost a sense of who we were because of the years in coalition, became painfully aware in the days and weeks following, as we see all of the green policies of the last government got rid of, as we see the inhuman approach to refugees from the Conservatives, we see the selling off of affordable homes, people on low incomes working hard and having their tax credits taken off them – there is a clear, obvious, in relief I guess, depiction of what the Liberal Democrats are for because all of those things the Liberal Democrats prevented whilst we were in power  But I think where we are now is very different to where the Labour party is.  Our reaction to losing power is to see what happened to the British people and think it’s not right that those terrible things are happening to low income people, to our green industry, to people who want an affordable home and therefore we want to get back into power. The Labour party’s response is to think we weren’t credible enough on the economy, let’s go further into fantasy.  Given we are in this situation now where the Tories will probably be in power for ten years if we’re not careful, it’s time that Britain had an economically credible and socially just opposition and that will be the Liberal Democrats.

DM: So you are going to have an avalanche of defections from the Labour party you think, that’s what Vince Cable said.  Of course Charles Clarke has just been saying that you lot are  playing mischievously.  

TIM FARRON: No, my sense is, I mean I’m not a home wrecker for the Labour party but I am a home provider for liberals and I think that Britain is full of liberals, some of them are the Liberal Democrats but some of them aren’t, there are people who are pro-European, socially just people within the Tory party actually who will be increasingly dismayed by the attack on low income households, people who work hard and don’t get paid very much money, having that money taken away from the by George Osborne, increasingly alarmed by the Tory party’s inhuman stance on refugees and their foolish stance on the European Union but there are plenty of liberals in the Labour party too, who believe like I do in social justice and individual freedom but also believe in economic competence and we are a home for all of those liberals.  

DM: But firm this up, have you had direct conversations – obviously you are not going to name names but have you had direct conversations with some Labour MPs who have said look, Tim, I don't think the party is ever going to go the way I want it, could we do business?

TIM FARRON: Not in those words but broadly speaking, yes.  

DM: How many?  

TIM FARRON: I’m not telling you, I mean I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I was going to breach people’s confidence.   

DM: I’m not asking for names, Vince Cable said there could be an avalanche.  How many?  

TIM FARRON: I am genuinely not going to tell you because when all’s said and done it is not fair that I put those people under pressure. Being human and ignoring the politics for a moment, the angst of many people who have worked in the Labour party for years and feel that it has dramatically changed into something that they don’t believe in the last fortnight is real and it’s a human issue and I think that we should have empathy and sympathy and like I say, it’s not for me to go making their lives any harder but just to say we are a home for every liberal in Britain and we want the Liberal Democrats to grow so that we can be the effective, socially just, economically credible opposition the Tories and the country need.

DM: But how about it going the other way?  You’ll be aware what Baroness Tong, Jenny Tong as was when she was a Lib Dem MP, I know she is now an independent peer, Lib Dem peer, but there is a lot of overlap in your policies aren’t there?  She likes things, and you mentioned some of them, the Labour party’s attitude to welfare cuts, you support that and presumably you are interested in their position on Syria, on international affairs, on defence, on Trident – there is a lot of overlap and of course the fact that the rich should pay for the economic crisis.  

TIM FARRON: So Jenny Tong is an independent in the House of Lords and she is an independent and not a Liberal Democrat because of her comments in the past on Israel Palestine which endorsed violence frankly and we as Liberal Democrats believe in a two state solution, we believe in justice for the Palestinians but we also believe in a secure Israel within legitimate borders and we think it is such an important issue that we won’t have truck with people who support violence on either side.  

DM: All right, that’s Jenny Tong but what about the point she’s making about substantive policy areas, and with the best will in the world even you in your optimistic mode would accept that the Labour party has got more chance of getting into government than you, there are a lot of policies coming out of Labour that Lib Dems would support.  

TIM FARRON: Funnily enough I am not always right about everything and everybody else is not always wrong about everything and there are going to be areas where we agree on various issues.  Take for example the welfare cuts from the Conservatives which are mostly targeted at people who are in work on low incomes so the Liberal Democrats under my leadership voted against those cuts to people, hardworking people on low incomes and the Labour party abstained.  To be fair to Jeremy Corbyn, he was one of a handful of then backbenchers who voted with us and so there are bound to be areas where I agree. I’m a pluralist, I’m not a tribalist but what I am saying though is when it all comes down to it, people in Britain are increasingly suffering, business is suffering particularly small businesses and we want to be the voice for small businesses, people who want an affordable home seeing them sold off and not available to them, people on low incomes having those incomes cut by the Chancellor, those people are not helped by an opposition that wanders into fantasy economics and doesn’t hold the government to account.  We will step into that breach and be the party of social justice and economic responsibility.  This is an historic moment for us and we are going to take that role.

DM: Well let me ask you about a hard and fast policy, we have just heard it haven’t we from Jeremy Corbyn, about rail renationalisation.  There seems to be an awful lot of sense in some of that doesn’t there?    

TIM FALLON: Well I think most people, me included as a regular rail user, are bothered about cheaper fares, more reliable trains, more trains and an expanded network and  who owns the network, who owns the operators is a side issue so it is wrong for either the Conservatives or the Labour party to just fixate on ownership, that’s just dogmatic.  Let’s think about the passengers, let’s think about the commuters, that’s what really matters and so to my mind we shouldn’t be doing what the current government does and that excludes the state from bidding for franchises, that is ludicrous that the French and the German state rail companies can bid for British rail franchises but the British state can’t, that is daft.  So certainly allowing more state intervention when that is appropriate is right but spending a whole lot of money on making something perhaps worse doesn’t seem very sensible. I am old enough to remember, as I guess you are too Dermot, British Rail.  Privatisation as done by the Tories was wrong but the situation beforehand was hardly marvellous, British Rail was not a wonderful provider of an excellent, cheap and timely service, quite the opposite.  So what we need to focus on is how you make lives better for commuters, for passengers and indeed the people who operate freight on the rail and not get ourselves obsessed with who owns what.

DM: Okay, last question I suppose which has dimensions on how you rate what your predecessor Nick Clegg managed to do. You’ve said that the Lib Dems now matter more than we have done for perhaps a generation, but what about just a few months ago when you were part of the government?

TIM FARRON: We made a massive difference in government and it has taken the five months of us not being in government ….

DM: Do you matter more than that now?

TIM FARRON: … to really show that … What I’m saying is that there is an historic change in British politics.  We have seen for the first time in maybe two generations almost the main party of opposition, the Labour party, choose to go in a direction that makes them probably unelectable and also puts them in a position where they are not economically credible. Lots of people who want to get rid of the Conservative government, who feel the Tories don’t speak for them, for their values, want a party that is socially just and economically credible, … by the Labour party and now it is filled by the Liberal Democrats.  

DM: Yes, we’ve heard all that Mr Farron but sorry to interrupt, you were in government with 56 MPs, you had a Deputy Prime Minister, a clutch of Cabinet Ministers, you are now down to a rump of eight MPs and you matter more now?  That means you are satisfied, you are more comfortable in opposition aren’t you?

TIM FARRON: No, the surprise in your voice in asking that question I guess is understandable because you look at our terrible result in May and yet you look at where we are now, you look at the increase in our membership, by-election gains over the summer but critically that British politics,  the landscape has changed totally in the last fortnight to put the Liberal Democrats in this amazing historic position to be the party of social justice and economic credibility and that is huge in many ways and I think that we should step up to that mark, we shouldn’t be shy of it.  You rightly point out that we are in a situation where we are going to have to do a lot of rebuilding, I’m bound to say though that six months ago the SNP had fewer MPs than we do now, today Scotland is sadly something close to a one party state.  Things change quickly and I am determined to be part of that change.  

DM: Watch this space.  Tim Farron, thank you very much indeed, the Liberal Democrat leader there in beautiful Bournemouth.