Not having hitherto been exactly a household name, Tim Farron obviously needed to come over close-up and personal. But was there as a danger of over-sharing here? Good to know, obviously, that “time with our children is pretty much my top priority” or that that “the one good thing” about the photos of him in a teenage band are that they’re “so low resolution find that you can’t make out the eye-liner.” Or that up there on the Westmorland fells he is “blessed” to “feel miniscule against the open skies, the vast lakes, the towering mountains.” But did we really need to know that when he watches it “on a Saturday night….with the kids” he finds X Factor “a terrible programme but strangely compelling”?
That said, his first leader’s conference speech was quite a turn. Part Thespian, part evangelist, part, for all his somehow broadened Lancashire accent, high pressure US style sales guru taking his apprentices through their paces--“Losing sucks!” he proclaimed - he had honed a delivery and timing that is unlikely to be matched this party conference season.
Ok, some of it was fairly shameless. “There are those,” he claimed, who wanted him to “distance myself” from five years in government, say it had all been a “dreadful mistake” and that “I disagree with Nick. But I don’t and I won’t.” But hang on, didn’t you say that you were giving the coalition “two out of ten”?
Especially as he then rather spoilt the effect by announcing that “we lost because people didn't know who we were, what our values are” - not perhaps the most flattering tribute to his predecessor’s leadership. Then his list of the Lib Dems’ stupendous achievements climaxed with “same sex couples finally getting the freedom to may the person they love” – a bit rich given that he abstained in the crucial Commons vote.
And some of it, was almost insanely optimistic. “We will create 10 garden cities with the infrastructure they need to thrive,” he announced euphorically. Well, not for a while you won’t, Tim. Only marginally more realistic, he promised to lead the opposition the country was apparently crying out for. ”Britain needs an opposition that is economically credible - (this was no time to spell out how) “radical, liberal. Britain needs an opposition, that is passionate and socially just.” Well, actually Britain needs an opposition with more than eight MPs.
His pro-European pitch probably included the speech’s best line: “Is it a threat to Britain if the leader of the Labour Party doesn’t sing the national anthem? Not really. Is it a threat to Britain if the leader of the Labour Party is ambivalent about Britain’s future in Europe. Absolutely.”
What brought them cheering to their feet though was his impassioned and surprisingly no holds barred castigation on the Prime Minister’s refugee policy and what he had seen on his own trip to Calais. Maybe he has calculated that he is riding the wave of a social movement. But he seemed to mean it when he blamed David Cameron for “a careful calibration of what it will take to manage that story, the minimum effort for the maximum headlines… it’s pitiful and embarrassing and makes me so angry.”
And though he is still a long way from acquiring the Paddy Ashdown gravitas, there was just an echo of the former Lib Dem leaders 1989 call for all British nationals in Hong Kong to be given the right of UK abode, in his plea for Britain to take is share of refugees.
Cornily, used a Joni Mitchell line from Big Yellow Taxi to describe a government without Liberal Democats: “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?” Sadly he didn’t quote the next two lines of that famous chorus. “They paved over paradise and put up a parking lot.” Maybe he’s saving that for his big environmental speech.
