Saturday, June 28, 2014

Tim Farron wants to keep Lib Dem options open in a hung parliament

George Eaton has a short interview with Tim Farron on the New Statesman website (and possibly in the magazine too).

He offers a shrewd summary of Tim's approach while the Liberal Democrats have been in coalition:
In the four years since the formation of the coalition government, the 44-year-old Lib Dem president has steered a shrewd course between loyalty and dissent. As a non-minister, he has been free to rebel on defining issues such as tuition fees, NHS reform and secret courts while remaining untainted by accusations of plotting.
The most interesting thing Tim himself has to say concerns the Lib Dem approach if there is a hung parliament after the next election:
While Clegg has ruled out support for anything short of full coalition, Farron argues otherwise. 
“When you go into negotiations with another party you have to believe – and let the other party believe – that there is a point at which you would walk away and when the outcome could be something less than a coalition, a minority administration of some kind. That is something we all have to consider.”

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