Tim Farron says the Labour party is failing and that his party’s clear pro-EU stance can help it become the main opposition

The Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, has accused Jeremy Corbyn of “lamely giving up” while Britain “drives off a cliff” towards Brexit, and said future generations will not forgive Labour for failing to stand up to Theresa May’s plans.

In an overt attempt to steal votes from Labour in pro-remain constituencies, Farron said he believed Corbyn had put his party on the wrong side of the biggest political issue in a generation and was struggling because his MPs were increasingly split on how to respond.

“I think what Labour has done is to believe this is too difficult for them politically, let’s just wait for it to go away, and the meeker we are, the quicker it will go away. I think that’s the calculation they’ve made, and this and future generations are not going to forgive them for that,” he said. “We are saying that Jeremy Corbyn and now Keir Starmer [the shadow Brexit secretary] as well – you have a Labour party from top to bottom that is failing.”



On Thursday, Corbyn sparked disquiet among his colleagues by signalling that he would expect Labour MPs to back legislation triggering article 50. Up to 30 Labour MPs, including several shadow cabinet members, are considering rebelling rather than back a bill that they believe will endorse the 12-point Brexit plan laid out by May in a speech on Tuesday.



Farron hopes that his party’s clear pro-EU position will propel it to an electoral revival, after it snatched a seat from the Conservatives in the Richmond Park byelection and relegated Labour into fourth position in Sleaford.

Setting out his version of the differences between the Lib Dems and Labour, Farron said it was necessary to oppose the Conservatives over Brexit: “It’s not divisive to hold the government to account, and not just to lamely give up as we go over a cliff, and that is what Labour are doing – they are being the most ineffective opposition in living memory.”

He suggested that the political shakeup set in train by Brexit could lead to his party displacing Labour as the main opposition, as Labour did to the divided Liberals in the 1920s. He even made a comparison to Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in Canada, who were third in the polls but went on to victory in 2015. “I feel like we are in a maze, and every maze has a way out. At the end of the maze is what happened in Canada.”

Some prominent Labour MPs believe the best way to combat the Conservatives is to cooperate with the Lib Dems and the Greens in a “progressive alliance”, but Farron said his party would not stand aside for a Labour candidate in any constituency because he believes Corbyn is “electorally toxic”. “The difficulty we’ve got with Labour at the moment is that they are on the wrong side of the argument from a progressive point of view on the biggest issue of the day. So what would that achieve at the moment?”

Forthcoming byelections in Copeland and Stoke, triggered by the resignations of two sitting MPs, will offer the best indication yet of the extent to which Brexit has shifted the political landscape. Farron made clear that his party would contest both, particularly Stoke, where he said the Lib Dems would go “hell for leather”: “There’s a really massive issue, where we’re the only people taking what I consider to be the right side. We need to be on the ballot paper.”



The Lib Dems have just nine MPs in Westminster, after being all but wiped out in the 2015 general election as voters took revenge for their decision to form a coalition with David Cameron’s Conservatives in 2010. But Farron, the MP for the Lake District constituency of Westmorland and Lonsdale, believes his party has a mission to oppose May’s Brexit plans, and that his stance will be vindicated by history.

The government is expected to table legislation allowing it to trigger article 50, the formal process for exiting the EU, as soon as next week if it loses a supreme court appeal. The court will announce its judgment on Tuesday. The Lib Dems plan to table a series of amendments, in particular calling for a referendum on the terms of the final Brexit agreement.



“We think the best thing is for Britain to stay in the European Union, and we hope to provide a vehicle, through a referendum on the terms of the deal, that allows them to do that,” Farron said. Without the promise of a public vote, he said, his party would not back any bill. “That’s our red line.”

In her speech this week, May promised to offer parliament a vote on whatever agreement she reaches with the other 27 EU member states after the two-year negotiating process. But the Brexit secretary, David Davis, has made clear that will not include offering MPs the chance to block Brexit by voting to remain in the EU. Instead, the only alternative will be to leave without any deal and revert to much higher tariffs under World Trade Organisation trading rules.

Farron claimed that by failing to offer a robust enough response to the government on Brexit, Labour had opened up the political space for May’s 12-point plan to exit the single market and central aspects of the customs union. “To me, what she has done is make a speech that is quite clever in a short-termist way, at closing down the likely opposition that she currently fears the most; in other words, some elements of the press, and her own party – the Brexit lobby.

“They will now venerate her, and she’ll be given a lot of political manoeuvre. It’s a reminder of how weak the opposition to the left is that she didn’t feel the need to box that off at all, apart from some nice words being in the speech about how much we love Europeans.”

He said May’s exit plan went far beyond the referendum result. “If we’d won with 52% of the vote, we would not have the right to exact a ‘hard remain’ and join the euro and sign up to Schengen. That would be ludicrous, but no more ludicrous than exiting the single market, probably against the will of the majority of the British people.”

Farron said the Liberal Democrats would continue to champion immigration and single market membership. “We think that freedom of movement is a good thing, and there’s not really anyone out there arguing for it, so we will do that.”