Europhile Tim Farron admits immigration WILL fall after Brexit – as new poll predicts Lib Dem slump
The former Lib Dem boss said 'no one in their right mind' would move to Britain
TIM FARRON today admitted that Brexit WILL succeed in cutting sky-high immigration - but says “no one in their right mind” would live in Britain once we quit the EU.
His confession comes as a new poll shows just a quarter of people would even consider voting for the Lib Dems in a blow for the third party.
Mr Farron, who quit as party boss after the election, today gave his farewell speech at the Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth.
He told activists that Brexit will end up cutting immigration - and to insist that he personally saved the party from oblivion.
Mr Farron said: “Britain’s exit from the European Union is making my country poorer, less safe and it is damaging the future of our children.
“There is one promise that Brexit will fulfil. It will reduce immigration without changing a single law. Because if you turn Britain into a poorer, meaner, insular place, no-one in their right mind will choose to come here.
“So the Tories are breaking Britain to repel the immigrants. And they do it with Labour’s shameful connivance. What a disgrace.”
He also boasted that he managed to grow the party from eight to 12 MPs despite claims that he would lead it to oblivion.
Mr Farron said: “The day I took over as leader, one journalist predicted confidently that ‘the party that began with Gladstone will now end with Farron’.
“I saw those assumptions that we were dead and buried and I resolved that we were going to survive, grow and win again.
“We saved the Liberal Democrats and I am proud of every single one of you.”
Despite his claims, a new poll shows that the party is unlikely to make large gains in the near future.
More than a third of the public say they will never vote for the Lib Dems, with only 23 per cent claiming they will consider backing the party at the next election.
The hard-core vote of people who will definitely support them stands at just 4 per cent - even less than they got at the General Election.
Even among the hardline EU enthusiasts who want to reverse the referendum result, just half are considering voting Lib Dem.
The news will come as a blow to Vince Cable, who insisted yesterday that he has a genuine chance of becoming Prime Minister.
During his speech, Mr Farron blasted Labour as a “joke” and warned their far-left ideology would wreck the country if Jeremy Corbyn ever became Prime Minister.
He said: "The party of Atlee, Gaitskell, Wilson, Callaghan, Blair and Brown is now run by the kind of people who used to try to sell me newspapers outside my students’ union.
"I say this to the majority in Labour who are social democrats - you may have saved your seats, but you have lost your party.
"Hard-left socialism is an assault on our economy, an assault on our internationalism, an assault on our liberty.
"And you know that the people who would suffer the most wouldn’t be the rich - it would be the poorest.”
He insisted that over time the public will change their minds on Brexit and end up supporting the Lib Dems’ position - just as they did with the Iraq War.
And Mr Farron also revealed that when he was a new MP, he once ended up walking into the House of Lords by mistake after a late-night drinking session.
