Jo Swinson this morning on Radio 4 confirmed her preference to just cancel Brexit by a vote in Parliament, but conceded she did not think there would be enough MPs in the next Parliament who would do that. She no longer believes there will be a Lib Dem majority government by Friday.
This is an interesting development. Every time I see her on tv in various constituencies around the country she is flanked by Lib Dem posters setting out their catch phrase, “Winning here”. It’s an odd and self serving slogan. Normally parties and candidates have slogans about what they want to do for the voters.
This Lib Dem slogan asserts that they uniquely know what voters are going to do in each place as if they have some special prescience the rest of us do not share about how people will vote. It now appears that in many of these places the Lib Dem leader thinks they are not winning after all. The slogan was apparently misleading or simply a lie. It would have been more modest and sensible if their posters said “Trying to win here” or “Keen to win here”. “Unlikely to win here” would be a bit of a turn off even where it was an honest assessment.
What was more bizarre was what she said about their fall back position, the wish to hold a second referendum on the EU issue. She vacillated about supporting a Labour government offering one and appeared to want to move straight to a second General election.
She would be under great pressure to accept a Labour minority government offering a second referendum. Her message of vote Lib Dem to get a hung Parliament, so we can then have a second General election to try for a different Parliament again is absurd. Why would anyone vote for a result which required another election immediately? It also looks like an attempt to cover up a likely deal with Labour were they to get their hung Parliament. No wonder her slogan is not “Vote for a hung Parliament so you can have a second General election”
She has consistently said there are no circumstances in which she would support a Conservative government seeking to implement the result of the referendum, so that only leaves one realistic option in a hung Parliament, a Labour led government.
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