SOUTH SOMERSET NEWS: Operation Fightback has started says LibDem leader

THE leader of the Liberal Democrats was in the Yeovil Constituency yesterday (Tuesday, May 24, 2016) to meet with local members and supporters.

The LibDems took a severe bashing at the 2015 General Election and saw their 57 seats drop to just eight at Westminster and they became the fourth largest party behind Conservative, Labour and the SNP.

But new leader Tim Farron, who won the party’s leadership election in July 2015 following the resignation of Nick Clegg after the disastrous General Election, believes that the LibDem have started the fightback in readiness for the nation goes to the polls once more in 2020.

The Yeovil Press met up with Mr Farron at the award-winning farming business run by the Baker family at Rushywood Farm at Haselbury Plucknett, near Crewkerne, which is producing thousands of litres of milk a day.

Mr Farron is now looking to start producing the goods himself as leader of the LibDems and get them back to where they were before last year’s heavy General Election defeat.

PHOTO - TOP: LibDem leader Tim Farron.

PHOTO - RIGHT: Tim Farron down on the farm at Haselbury Plucknett near Crewkerne.

And he has said that Somerset and the South West is a key area for the LibDems to concentrate their Operation Fightback.

“Things feel very positive,” he said. “The local elections earlier this month were good and showed we had turned a corner from the hammering we took at the General Election.

“There is no question that if we don’t recover here in the South West then Conservative will continue forever.”

Mr Farron said the party had to start “motivating people” to sign up to the LibDem cause.

“We’ve got a poor Labour opposition although I do like Jeremy Corbyn (the Labour leader) for what it’s worth,” he said. “The Conservative Government is taking the country and its people for granted.”

Mr Farron said Paddy Ashdown - himself a former Yeovil MP and leader of the LibDems – once told him that “you make your own luck.”

“We need to roll our sleeves up and get on with it,” said Mr Farron. “I was told as a child that we’ve got two ears and one gob and we should use them in that proportion – and that is what we have got to do. We’ve got to listen to the people.”

The LibDems lost Somerset MPs in the Yeovil, Taunton, Wells and Somerton & Frome constituencies at the General Election in 2015 as the Conservatives swept to power.

Mr Farron was in South Somerset yesterday as part of his tour to promote the Remain In vote in the forthcoming EU referendum.

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