The outgoing Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable has claimed a “significant number” of Labour and Conservative MPs are talking to his party about joining, in a wide-ranging interview with the BBC.
Sir Vince said the brief prospect of a new centre party being formed was now dead and described Change UK as a media ‘bubble’.
Speaking to Carolyn Quinn for the Westminster Hour on Radio 4, Sir Vince also rejected the idea of forming a post-election agreement with a Jeremy Corbyn led minority Labour Government.
He said defections to the Lib Dems from both main parties were likely, adding: “There are quite a lot of Tory MPs, some Labour, who were going to make the jump and didn’t but are now realising that their position is becoming impossible who might well come to us. So we’re talking to quite a wide group of people, not just the Independent MPs.”
But this raises a “big question” for his own party, he said. “how we engage with the significant number of Labour people and the Tory people who no longer belong in their parties. If they want to make a break, how do we do it?”
Speaking about his own party’s relative success in the European elections and the failure orf Change UK to win seats, he said: “I don’t think we should be smug and go around saying, I told you so.
“But they did make a serious miscalculation – and they were egged on by plenty of commentators who misunderstood what politics is all about. And people were playing around with these ideas about new parties – I think that’s now dead.”
Change UK lacked party infrastructure, he said. “ It was just a media bubble and it burst.”
Asked if the Lib Dems could countenance a deal with a minority Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn, if the next election produces a hung Parliamentl, Sir Vince said: “No we couldn’t. We’re so far removed from him on Europe – where their commitment is to deliver Brexit and they’re totally ambiguous on the referendum issue; the fact that they’ve indulged anti-Semitism and some very unpleasant stuff in their own party; and the economics is just fantasy. So there’s no way we could contemplate a coalition [or] electoral deal with them.”
But he said he would be willing for the Lib Dems to cooperate with the Green Party with whom they agree on Brexit and climate change.
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