Layla Moran vows to make the Liberal Democrat party 'relevant' again

Interview: Layla Moran called for a “liberal revival” and said her inspiration would be Charles Kennedy
Lib Dem leadership hopeful MP Layla Moran
PA
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People no longer know what the Lib Dems stand for, said leadership hopeful Layla Moran today as she vowed to make the party “relevant” again.

The MP said her party “lost trust” in the Coalition years in a thinly veiled swipe at her rival Sir Ed Davey, who served as a minister in the Lib Dem-Conservative government.

In an interview with the Standard, Ms Moran said: “My job now, should I be elected leader, is to make people see the relevance of the Lib Dems again.”

Ms Moran called for a “liberal revival” and said her inspiration would be Charles Kennedy.

The former leader, who died in 2015, was one of the most influential politicians of his generation, at the forefront of opposition to the Iraq War and led the Lib Dems to their best ever result in 2005.

Ms Moran said former leader Charles Kennedy was: "Very much my inspiration for where I think we should be in terms of a political space."
Andrew Milligan/PA Wire

Ms Moran added: “One of the things that's been really worrying me is that these days if you knock on a door, and you say to someone ‘Hi I'm a Liberal’ they don't really understand what that means anymore.

“What we need to achieve in this country is a liberal revival. It's a revival of the Liberal Democrats as part of that, it's a renewal of the party.”

The 37-year-old former maths teacher, who was elected to Parliament in 2017, refused to comment on Sir Ed directly but said: “More than 50 per cent of our party membership are new since we lost trust over Coalition.

“I'm an MP new since then and electing me as leader would send that clear signal that we are forward looking and that we are planning to move forwards together both as a party and as a country.”

Ms Moran also said she was “not fixated” on becoming Prime Minister in contrast to the previous leader Jo Swinson who insisted she could be PM but lost her own seat in the party’s disastrous performance at the December 2019 election.

Ms Moran added: “To be perfectly honest, I would be very happy if I'm a leader for 10 years but at the end of it we are a strong parliamentary force again.

“If at the next election you knock on a door and someone goes ‘I’m Lib Dem’, and they know what we stand for, that to me is what success would look like.”

Ms Moran, who announced she is pansexual and in a relationship with a woman earlier this year, also said her party was the “champion of progressive values”.

Asked about a potential future coalition, she ruled out ever working with Boris Johnson but said she had a “huge amount of respect” for Sir Keir Starmer and would be “open” to working with Labour.

She also left the door open to the Lib Dems campaigning to re-join the EU in the future but said she did not think the country was there yet.

She added: “If you want an ally, if you believe that the best place for our country was in the EU and you want to believe that there's a party that one day when the moment is right would start campaigning for it – and I don't know when that would be – then come and join the Lib Dems because we are your party.”

Ms Moran is going head-to-head with acting leader of the Lib Dems Sir Ed Davey
AFP via Getty Images

Mr Moran was born in Hammersmith to a Palestinian mother and English diplomat father. Much of her childhood was spent growing up in Brussels and countries across the world.

A postal ballot of Lib Dem members will take place over the summer, with the winner announced on 26 August.

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