Tim Farron is the most under-rated politician in the UK today. I write this in France having just read Martin Kettle’s piece in The Guardian on the French presidential election and watched people voting in the first round. (I had taken my wife after her nearly six-month hospitalisation for an Easter break at our favourite hideaway when the election was announced by the PM. By the way I approved of two things the French do which we could with advantage copy: first they had outside each polling station large metal framed posters of the 11 candidates instead of the untidy rash of party billboards we encourage – the next day our local venue had them reduced to the two for the next round, Macron and Le Pen, the latter sporting a scrawled Hitler moustache; and second they conduct and announce the count at each station sending in the paper ballots just for safe keeping, resulting in much quicker announcements of the results.)
Kettle wrote about Macron’s likely success and speculating on the non-existent centre ground in British politics asserted that “Tim Farron isn’t strong enough”. On the surface that is undeniable. He heads a parliamentary group decimated at the last election and, for the first time, not even the third party in the Commons. He is relatively unknown; he looks too young (well, dammit, he is 46, while Macron is 39 and Canadian Liberal PM Justin Trudeau 45) and he has a quick-fire northern accent which does not always appeal to sections of the snobby media.
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