I’m a Conservative voter, my partner is Conservative – truth be told the whole family is and I don’t make any secret of it on here.
But in the run up to the election me and DP had a disagreement in that he absolutely loathes Corbyn. I argued that I didn’t mind JC because what you see is what you get. There is no pretence or disguise there. Corbyn is an old school socialist and you can find videos on youtube going back four decades and he’s saying then what he says now. I’d never vote for him, but I didn’t dislike him either personally or politically and he didn’t bother me in the sense that I felt no antagonism or dislike towards the bloke, even though his political views are the complete opposite of my own.
Farron on the other hand I could not abide. Every time I heard him speak my shackles would rise, and as a former Lib Dem voter and indeed, one-time active campaigner (if not party member) I’ve never loathed a LD leader as much as I did Farron. I found him shallow, duplicitous, unpatriotic, whingy, whiny and illiberal in his desire to shut people down all the time. I literally could not stand the bloke.
So when I heard he’d resigned I thought ‘good’ and was all ready to come on here and crow and gloat. First place I went to look for a discussion online about it was Mumsnet.
But then I read what he had to say – about his faith, and politics and the dilemma he’s faced in trying to reconcile the two and suddenly I wasn’t so keen to stick the boot in.
Being an old fashioned bible believing Christian is very much out of vogue these days. Most of us are atheists or agnostics and for those who do have a faith, either devoutly or on the periphery, are increasingly in the minority. So despite disliking the man’s politics, what he has to say and the way he says it … I find myself in the unusual position of actually, now he’s resigned, having a heightened level of respect for him.
“The consequences of the focus on my faith is that I have found myself torn between living as a faithful Christian and serving as a political leader. A better, wiser person may have been able to deal with this more successfully, to remain faithful to Christ while leading a political party in the current environment. To be a leader, particularly of a progressive liberal party in 2017 and to live as a committed Christian and to hold faithful to the Bible's teaching has felt impossible for me"
Whether you agree with him or not, this is a man who has made a decision of ‘conscience’ based upon his own personal beliefs, which shows there is a moral battle/dilemma going on there. So many politicians it seems are devoid of that kind of inner turmoil and will say or do or behave in the most self beneficial way without giving a tuppeny shit about anything else.
Farron on the other hand has clearly been a man in turmoil, wrestling with his faith and his politics. For me, I’m not sorry to see him go but I do indeed have a better opinion of the man than I did previously.