“I was a Conservative candidate. May’s Brexit strategy has made me join the Lib Dems”
So writes Azi Ahmed for The Guardian. She was the Conservative candidate in Rochdale last time and served in the Territorial Army and has also recorded this video about her decision:
Here’s an extract from her Guardian piece explaining her switch to the Liberal Democrats:
Standing on the stage at the Conservative party conference last autumn to introduce defence secretary Michael Fallon to delegates was one of the proudest moments of my life.
I told them of my remarkable journey, growing up in a close-knit Muslim family in Oldham, where I ran a kebab shop with my mother, serving in the Territorial Army and the opportunities it brought me, contesting Rochdale for the Conservatives at the 2015 election. I talked of my belief that the party would allow Britain to stand tall as a proud, outward-looking nation.
Yet eight months later I have decided to leave the party. I have today written to the Conservatives to resign my party membership. I am joining the Liberal Democrats and will campaign for Tim Farron in the final days of the election campaign. Why?
Maybe the clue lies in my words to the party conference on that day in Birmingham last October. I fervently believe that Britain must be an outward-looking country and that we are stronger inside the European Union than we will be outside it. Like many Conservatives who voted remain, I reluctantly accepted the result of last year’s referendum but expected the government would take a responsible approach to the Brexit negotiations. Instead, I have watched in horror as Theresa May has adopted an extreme version of Brexit. She is echoing Nigel Farage’s mean-spirited agenda, which will cost us jobs and put up prices. I believe it will be a disaster for Britain.
Before World War I the Conservative and Unionist party used every trick in the political book, (and some not in the book), to frustrate Home Rule for Ireland. In the summer of 1914, civil war in Ireland seemed more likely than a general war in Europe. In 1921-22, the Conservatives accepted independence for the southern Irish Free State and moved on. They were on the wrong side of history and realised it. Yet this event was a far bigger deal for the United Kingdom to swallow than Brexit is ever likely to be because it touched directly, in raw and violent ways, on the territorial integrity of the UK. In the same way, the Liberal Democrats (and the other parties) should accept Brexit, move on and plan for the future. The alternative is to be left behind re-fighting old battles for lost causes.
You know if only those Quitters had “just moved on , shut up and got over it” as we built an integrated European Union – imperfect in form but better than what we had in the early 20th C. But no they continued to fight on and look where that has got us eh? What a pretty pass. No I will NOT ” move on” as “my country” has been stolen from me. Get used to it, it’s Quitters who need to “move on” preferably to some remote little island off the coast of Europe..oh that’ll be there then.. ;-(
There is no ‘moving on ‘ from a disastrous Brexit. All due respect to the Irish issue, Brexit will hurt all of the UK’s 60 million citizens for decades to come, and will hurt the Irish people and EU citizens, too. Besides, the likes of Farage and Bill Cash never ‘moved on ‘ from their anti-EU fanaticism for forty years. Why should those of us who see the true damage that Brexit will cause give up on our country now?
I. for one, will not ‘move on’ from the Remain position and philosophy. I was brought up in India, and have been an internationalist in outlook all my life. I value friends above enemies (and we have too many of the latter). The Founding Fathers of the USA did have this correct: E pluribus unum. And as a trade unionist I believed there is strength in unity.
The various Leave campaigns were massively funded by Little Englanders, and people were NOT told the truth. Nor was the Remain campaign exactly positive and sparkling.
So we are to accept a Hard Brexit that was never on the ballot paper? I think NOT.
It is Europe which has ‘moved on’ – too far in the wrong direction. Whilst the EU was originally set up around steel and coal production it later gravitated around agricultural and environmental policy and is now being moved towards a political debacle surrounding the ‘accession states’. As Liberals we all agree that the world will work best with emancipated individuals trading freely with each other. That is not the EU of the future. The EU is becoming mired in protectionism as evidenced by the fighter jet which at the same time as being invisible to those within the union, isolates those within the union from the global market place. The United Kingdom should remain a member of the customs union in order to mitigate against WTO tariffs but leave the single market – our goods should only be regulated by the EU when being sold there; we must be free to satisfy demands of world markets. The problems caused by free movement of individuals will be soothed by the actions of the free market, inparticular developing demand for goods originating in accession states.