Voters deserve a better choice of leader than Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn in a general election, Jo Swinson said yesterday as she positioned herself as an unlikely “candidate for prime minister”
It would take a political earthquake to put in but that didn’t stop the 39-year-old Scot, in her first conference speech as Lib Dem leader, announcing she was the only candidate who would stop “on day one” in No10.
Defections from the have swelled her party’s ranks to 18 MPs at Westminster but the party’s policy of cancelling Brexit without a second referendum has captured attention for Swinson, who yesterday ignored the consequences such a move might offer the SNP on independence.
Instead, the East Dunbartonshire MP appealed to Scottish voters to join a “bigger movement for change” across the UK to stop Brexit.
“Europe makes our United Kingdom stronger, but Brexit hurts our family of nations,” she added.
Ahead of a widely anticipated general election, Swinson said she could not wait to take on PM , Labour leader Corbyn and Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage.
She urged members to prepare for “the fight of our lives for the heart and soul of Britain”.
She criticised as a “1970s socialist” and for what she called a lukewarm attitude to staying in the European Union.
Swinson said: “If he had campaigned to remain in 2016 with half of the energy he put into the 2017 election, we may have seen a different result.”
She added: “Nigel Farage might be Brexit by name, but it is very clear that is Brexit by nature.”
But her best lines were aimed at Johnson, highlighting herself as the change candidate against the crisis-hit prime minister.
She said Johnson was “silencing critics, purging opponents, ignoring the law” but added that Johnson’s choice of insults such as “big girl’s blouse” and “girly swot” were “revealing”.
She added: “If he thinks being a woman is somehow a weakness, he’s about to find out it is not.”
Turning to what her party can offer a country exhausted by political squabbling, she said: “The whole of our society, including business, should work towards building the kind of country we want.
“People, and our planet, will thrive with the Liberal Democrats in power.”
