ES Lifestyle newsletter The latest lifestyle, fashion and travel trends Enter your email address Continue Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in Register with your social account or click here to log in I would like to receive trends and interviews from fashion, lifestyle to travel every week, by email Update newsletter preferences

Halfway through our interview — to test his reaction — I tell Tim Farron that I voted to leave the EU. The Liberal Democrat leader triple-blinks, then nods earnestly. “Right. Yep.” I’m joking, I say — I’m a young Londoner! “I’m a Northerner, working-class, white and 46,” he counters. “I’m completely the wrong demographic for Remain.”

And yet he’s the self-proclaimed “Remoaner-in-chief”. He has chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt on speed dial (“I bet Theresa May doesn’t”). He even has groupies — our conversation is twice interrupted by fans. “You’re doing a great job!” one declares. Farron promises he hasn’t paid her.

The liberty bird really is rising from the ashes. Since the referendum it has won the Richmond by-election and a string of council seats. For a party with nine MPs, Farron dreams big: “We are seeking to replace the Labour Party so we can challenge the Tories.” Brexit, antithetical to their thinking, may prove the Lib-Dems’ salvation.

We meet in a Euston coffee shop. Farron orders a croissant, which disintegrates in his fingers, firing crumbs everywhere. For much of our interview there’s a croissant flake on his nose. He’s wearing his trademark Doc Martens (he was once the lead singer of a band dubbed a “fourth-rate New Order”) and as a Blackburn Rovers fan his conversation is littered with football similes. Labour under Corbyn is “like when you replace a good centre-half with a non-leaguer — suddenly there’s no proper defence”. In the coalition, the Lib-Dems were “Chopper Harris — clearing every ball off the touchline”.

He’s been up since 5:15am to catch the train to London for the Unite for Europe march. There, he told the crowd that May’s take on Brexit is like “jumping out of an aeroplane without a parachute”. Afterwards, he describes it as the “most polite demonstration — very British, no angry faces”. His favourite placard? “One that just said ‘Tut!’”

There was a row over whether the march should go ahead after last Wednesday’s terrorist attack. One group, the European Movement, told its supporters to stay away because of the burden it might put on police. “You should get on with doing normal stuff, especially the normal stuff of democracy,” Farron responds. “Given what these people want from us — to be scared — that’s the last thing we should do.”

Home Secretary Amber Rudd responded to the attack by calling on tech giants including Facebook-owned WhatsApp to stop “providing a secret place for terrorists to communicate with each other”, after the man responsible, 52-year-old Khalid Masood, was found to be using the encrypted messaging service on his phone.

Farron disagrees. “By implementing laws that limit our civil liberties we would be playing into terrorists’ hands,” he tells me. “Having the power to read everyone’s text messages is neither a proportionate nor an effective response. Could lives have been saved last week if end-to-end encryption had been banned? The evidence suggests not.”

He confesses that on Wednesday he wanted “more than anything” to go home. “I knew I mustn’t. And today I’d rather be with my kids, but this is important. The destiny of our country is up for grabs.”

Critics have questioned the point of marching, given that Article 50 will be triggered tomorrow. Farron says it is both to “galvanise” those who don’t want to leave the EU or the single market, and to counter the “combative message” May is sending to Europe. “Not only is that morally right but it’s good diplomacy.”

Farron wants another referendum on the terms of the deal. “As Tony Blair says, people should carry on campaigning — anyone who slams that doesn’t understand democracy. But people also need a vehicle to change their mind.”

He likens Brexit Secretary David Davis’s job to “filling in a blank piece of paper”. Once full, Farron argues, “a betrayal narrative” will build. “You saw the first signs of that during Davis’s performance before the Commons Brexit committee, like when he confessed we wouldn’t have passporting of financial services.”

So how bad will it be to leave without a deal? “In London you’d have 10 per cent tariffs on financial services. Bankers are people too! And they contribute £65 billion a year in taxes to the Exchequer, so you won’t get an adequate health or care sector, or even an Army with a hard Brexit.”

If we’re out of the EU on April 1, 2019 — “an interesting choice of date”, Farron quips — the Lib-Dems will call for the UK to rejoin “on our terms”. But we already have a jammy deal — no euro, no Schengen — why would we be allowed back in? “In Brussels they love the idea — in theory — of Britain rejoining,” Farron replies. He also thinks May has given up too easily on the single market. “She says the EU won’t move on freedom of movement so we can’t be in the single market. That’s rubbish. There’s plenty of potential pragmatism from Europe.”

Farron claims that the majority of those at the march who told him they were now Lib-Dems were former Tory voters, not ex-Labour. “Around 70 per cent. They saw the Tory party as the party of business — now they don’t.”

Anti-Brexit 'March for Europe' protest 10 show all Anti-Brexit 'March for Europe' protest 1/10 Organiser estimated up to 30,000 people attended the central London rally PA 2/10 Thousands parade through the streets of the capital for the anti-Brexit march PA 3/10 Pro-EU protesters painted their faces in the colours of the union's flag PA 4/10 Demonstrators held placards expressing their support for the European Union PA 5/10 Some placards were more imaginative than others PA 6/10 Bob Geldof was among famous faces to address demonstrators at Parliament Square PA 7/10 Lib Dem leader Tim Farron also addressed crowds during the rally Getty 8/10 The route from Hyde Park to Westminster passed major London landmarks including Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square Getty/AFP 9/10 Demonstrators attached an EU balloon to the statue of Winston Churchill outside Parliament PA 10/10 Some demonstrators had digs at the politicians behind the UK's Leave campaign, including now Tory leadership hopeful Michael Gove PA 1/10 Organiser estimated up to 30,000 people attended the central London rally PA 2/10 Thousands parade through the streets of the capital for the anti-Brexit march PA 3/10 Pro-EU protesters painted their faces in the colours of the union's flag PA 4/10 Demonstrators held placards expressing their support for the European Union PA 5/10 Some placards were more imaginative than others PA 6/10 Bob Geldof was among famous faces to address demonstrators at Parliament Square PA 7/10 Lib Dem leader Tim Farron also addressed crowds during the rally Getty 8/10 The route from Hyde Park to Westminster passed major London landmarks including Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square Getty/AFP 9/10 Demonstrators attached an EU balloon to the statue of Winston Churchill outside Parliament PA 10/10 Some demonstrators had digs at the politicians behind the UK's Leave campaign, including now Tory leadership hopeful Michael Gove PA

In his constituency, Westmorland and Lonsdale, “the Toriest man you have ever met” just joined the Lib-Dems. “It’s probably the most reluctant membership cheque I ever took.” He even claims Churchill would have “defected back”, were he alive. “A hundred per cent. He would never have hung around with a bunch of anti-Europeans.”

After we speak, Douglas Carswell quits Ukip. Farron, on the phone later, says May has done for the party. “Her Mansion House speech [last November] was a land grab for Ukip territory. May has as big a Momentum problem as Labour has — a protectionist, anti-business group has seized the party. I’m never sure if she’s their leader or their follower.”

And is Ukip dead? “You should never write a party off,” he chuckles, knowingly. “Is there room for a protectionist, nationalist, anti-Europe party in British politics? Yes. It’s just that it’s now the Tory party.” He thinks Carswell showed backbone. “His party has left him, so he’s left his party. Liberal, pro-business Tory MPs know their party has left them — they should leave too.”

In the last quarter the Lib-Dems received more donations than Labour for the first time. This means the party is solvent. “We overtook Labour with former Tony donors,” he giggles, then corrects himself: “Tory donors! Old Tony donors are next!”

Anecdotally, many new Lib-Dems come from Labour too. “Labour’s failing is to be neither fish nor fowl on the biggest issue of the day. If you are a party of our size, nuance is a dirty word.”

Labour friends keep inviting Farron to see Limehouse, the new Donmar Warehouse play about the formation of the SDP. Perhaps remembering that struggle, no Labour MPs have asked to defect yet. “Much as I love them, they’re all generals without armies, and I’m interested in armies. At this time when anything can happen, why couldn’t the best thing happen? That’s the Lib-Dems taking their place.”

As for Jeremy Corbyn, Farron thinks he may go after a “drubbing” in the local elections next year. “But many MPs are waiting for the next general election. Labour could end up with fewer than 150 seats, and half will be Momentumists.”

So did he want a snap general election? “If I was being utterly selfish, yes — we would make bigs gains. Labour would be annihilated. But May would have taken her 100-seat majority as a mandate for the hardest-possible Brexit. It would have been bad for the country.”

Currently, Farron thinks the only possible electoral results are a Tory majority or a Tory minority government. He won’t rule out going into coalition again but can’t see how a “progressive majority” could be formed. Given that he once gave the Lib-Dems two out of 10 for the handling of the last coalition, what would he do differently? “Our achievements were great but not our selling of them.” The 2015 unofficial message — “it would have been worse without us” — was a tough sell, he concedes, but “absolutely works now”. He says Nick Clegg even gets cheered at universities. “Brexit has been a reset button in British politics.”

Farron has two daughters and two sons — his eldest is over 18 and voted Remain, although others in his immediate family didn’t. How would he feel if one child became a Brexiteer? “That’s life, innit? I’m waiting for the horrible day when one becomes a Burnley fan.”

He’s Christian and says his faith “puts everything in perspective”. Are people in public life afraid to talk about religion? “Yes. In America you’ve got to invent a faith to be taken seriously; in the UK you have to pretend not to have one. You shouldn’t be ashamed.”

Both on the treatment of EU nationals and our relationship with Europe, he talks about morality. And when I ask about his greatest mistake (expecting him to name abstaining on a gay marriage vote), he instead says: “I wish I had reached out more to Charles Kennedy when he stepped down. It was an unimaginably hard time for him. I regret that more than anything.”

For now, Farron’s energy is channelled in one direction. “In 20 years our kids will ask, ‘What did you do to prevent this calamity?’ I want to be able to say, ‘Absolutely everything’.”

He looks so earnest, even though that croissant crumb has somehow migrated to his eyebrow. “The only way Brexit will not happen is if the British people don’t want Brexit to happen.”