EXCL Lib Dem leadership race kicks off as Wera Hobhouse confirms she wants to succeed Jo Swinson
5 min read
The Liberal Democrats shot themselves “in the foot” at the election by focusing their fire on Labour instead of the Tories, the first MP to confirm they are running to succeed Jo Swinson has declared.
Launching her bid for the top job in a piece for PoliticsHome, Wera Hobhouse urged her party to make a “clean break” from its 2010-2015 coalition with the Conservatives - and said it could no longer stay “halfway between left and right” if it wants to survive.
The stark warning comes after a tough election for the Lib Dems, with Ms Swinson losing her seat to the SNP, the party sliding backwards on its 2017 Commons total, and every single MP who had defected to its ranks from either Labour or the Conservatives being ousted.
Ms Hobhouse - who entered the Commons after the Lib Dem-Tory coalition ended in 2017 - slammed the party’s decision to try and stay “equidistant” from Labour and the Conservatives in the years since then.
“In the most recent election, we trained our fire equally at the Conservatives and Labour, even though Labour backed a People’s Vote, had a plan to address the climate crisis and wanted to invest in public services to deliver a more equal society,” she said.
And she added: “By aiming so much fire at Labour (rather than just distinguishing ourselves from Labour) we weakened the centre-left as a whole. As a consequence, we strengthened the Conservatives and thereby shot ourselves in the foot in the majority of constituencies where our immediate opponent was Conservative.”
While the Bath MP said the Lib Dems remained “clearly distinct” from Labour on issues including civil liberties and the role of the state in the economy, she urged her party to stop trying to appeal to both sides - and said the coalition had "legitimised the Conservatives' long-term illiberal, nationalist agenda".
Ms Hobhouse said: “Our instinct for political cooperation should be channelled into working with those who share many of our core values, not with those who are ideologically opposed to them. We need to make a clean break with the last decade.”
The Lib Dem leadership hopeful, who is the first MP to confirm she is vying to lead the party, also mounted a robust defence of its decision to run on an avowedly anti-Brexit platform, amid criticism of its decision to push the policy of revoking Article 50.
And she left the door open to the Lib Dems campaigning to rejoin the European Union at a later date.
“We were right to take an unequivocal anti-Brexit stance working with other parties on the centre-left, to set the national agenda and to successfully pressure the Labour Party into backing a People’s Vote,” Ms Hobhouse said.
She added: “The Revoke position indeed proved a lot harder to explain than intended. But the clear ‘Stop Brexit’ message in the European Elections, which arose from the same unflinching, strident pro-EU position, is what catapulted us back to relevance in the national conversation in May.
“Going forward we should be proud of the dynamic pro-European movement which has been at the heart of our national revival. We must keep the flame of EU membership alive as a genuine possibility for Britain, because if the flame goes out it may never be relit.”
MORAN: CAMPAIGN WAS 'HUBRISTIC'
The intervention from the Bath MP comes as other likely candidates weigh up their bids for the top job.
Those expected to enter the race include Sir Ed Davey, who is currently leading the party on an interim basis, education spokesperson Layla Moran, and the newly-elected Daisy Cooper.
Ms Moran told ITV News's Acting Prime Minister podcast on Wednesday that the party had "spectacularly failed" to manage expectations ahead of the vote, and criticised the "mistake" by Ms Swinson to pitch herself as a potential prime minister.
She told the broadcaster: "I think that combined with the high numbers of seats that we were predicting, that made us look a bit hubristic. Combined with revoke, that was seen as arrogant...so I do think there were mistakes that were made."
And she said it still had "a huge amount of work still to do" before it could campaign for Britain's re-entry to the EU.
Pressed on whether she would run for leader, Ms Moran said: "I've been really open that it is a job that I would consider. But I'm definitely not at the point where I'm going to say that I would definitely do it. Because I personally think that it's one thing to say it's a job that I could do, which is probably where I am, but it's quite another to say I know what I'm going to do with it."
The Lib Dems have said nominations for candidates will open on 11 May and close on 28 May - with members balloted between 18 June and 15 July.
Under the party's rules, candidates hoping to make it onto the ballot must have the support of a Commons colleague and win the backing of at least 200 members across 20 local parties.
A wide-ranging review of its election campaign performance is also being carried out by party chiefs.
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