Change UK want to ‘crush’, not cooperate with, the Lib Dems

Liberal Democratic Party leader Vince Cable (C) poses with the party's MEP candidates for the European Parliament election Photo: DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images - Credit: AFP/Getty Images

In this week’s mailbag readers have sympathy for the Liberal Democrats, who reportedly wanted an electoral pact with other Remain parties.

The European elections offered a chance for Remainers to come together to defeat Brexit. As leader of the Liberal Democrats, Vince Cable proposed a pact to both the Greens and Change UK. Both parties turned down this offer.

A memo has now emerged revealing that Change UK wish to crush the Lib Dems. This is not new politics but reflects the intransigence of both Momentum and the ERG.

The Lib Dems have the moral high ground and deserve to be rewarded for it.

John Rossington, Dewsbury


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The Lib Dems have been demanding a second referendum since 2016. We have said for three years that we want to stay in Europe and we have an agreed manifesto of policies.

If in the European elections there was a combined 30% vote from Remainers, we would be the largest UK group. Split us up, and we lose out big-time.

That is why Vince Cable approached Change UK, but they refused our offers of a pact. It is annoying that in TNE #141 you say that Vince ‘claimed’ to have approached them, but party leaders ‘denied’ this. In fact, Change UK are quite open about their refusal to cooperate. They are putting their trust in an imperfect PR system which obviously they have failed to understand.

TNE readers and Remainers in general are enabled to use their vote to best effect in order to get good MEPs into Brussels. And that, almost certainly, according to the polls, does not mean voting for Change UK.

Alison Willott, Tregaer

So the wishes of Labour members on a confirmatory referendum have been fudged yet again, thanks to the handful of hard-left union leaders and the hardcore of Corbynites who rule the NEC.

Whatever the other virtues of their platform in the European elections, surely there is no point in Remainers even plumping for Labour as the least-bad option this time? Despite the best efforts of Keir Starmer and Tom Watson to drag him over the line, we can be sure that the Labour party will never fully endorse a People’s Vote while Jeremy Corbyn is leader and instead will go on chasing its own unicorns of a Brexit which protects jobs and workers’ rights.

So it is time for us to show our disapproval and send a clear message by going for the Lib Dems, the Greens or Change UK.

And surely it is time for Watson, Starmer and some TNE regulars to consider their own positions in supporting a party which has shown it has disdain for the views of its members.

P Prentice

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