Three days on and I’m still utterly livid at the way in which Tim Farron was forced to resign on Wednesday. His own searingly heartfelt and at times confusing resignation statement has raised more questions than it answered and I know that some LGBT people in the party, particularly LGBT Christians in the party are bewildered and upset by that.
Tim doesn’t have a homophobic bone in his body. He loves people, all people and cares deeply about the issues which affect their life chances. He has argued for the fight for LGBT rights to be advanced in various ways because he knows that that is the right thing to do.
The snap election was a bit of a perfect storm for him. The Tories, who hadn’t really tried to win Westmorland in 2015, upped the ante, so as well as representing the party around the country, he had a fight on his beloved home patch which he only narrowly won. The election was too soon to be properly about Brexit and because neither the other two parties nor the media wanted to scare any horses, so our unique position was not as known or appealing as it would have been in a couple of years time. That, of course, is why Theresa May took the gamble she did.
In trying to piece together the events of this week, I hear, though, that Tim had returned to Westminster in a positive mood. Friendly sources close to him tell me that he had pretty much decided that he wouldn’t fight another election and would have stepped down in an orderly fashion in the not too distant future.
Unfortunately, certain of our peers couldn’t wait for that to play out. Tim had come under criticism from them at their Parliamentary Party meeting and some of them felt that action was required sooner rather than later. On Wednesday afternoon, it seemed that a concerted effort to get rid of Tim was under way when Brian Paddick resigned as Shadow Home Secretary. (Update 9:40 pm)Lord Paddick in the comments below denies involvement in any concerted action but others did make public attempts to undermine Tim Farron). The day before, Liz Barker, who is not a supporter of Tim’s, retweeted an article saying that Tim needed to go, saying it was something to think about. Anthony Lester, or at least his office, responded to Paddick’s tweet announcing his resignation by saying that we needed a change of leader.