Tim Farron

Once upon a time, I was actually a Lib Dem voter. As I said shortly after he died, Charles Kennedy was probably as close to my own political stance as any mainstream politician has come in my lifetime.

But they left me a long time ago, pretty much as a direct consequence of ousting CK. I initially thought Ming Campbell might be a good substitute, but he singularly failed to impress, and I never had much time for Nick Clegg even before the coalition. (That said, the coalition would have been forgivable but for two things. Firstly, the delivery of voting reform, not just a referendum on a crap compromise, should have been an absolute red line. Secondly, having signed personal pledges on the issue, the Lib Dem MPs absolutely had to vote against rises to tuition fees - that shouldn't even have been a discussion.)

As for Tim... well. They had to have someone, and there weren't a lot of choices, so I guess he did the job. He always seemed a bit useless, even at the best of times. For the most part, my reaction to his resignation is a resounding "meh".

Except...

From a Lib Dem perspective, my over-riding memory of the election campaign was from the first week, in which Tim Farron found himself caught up in a 'scandal' because of his views on homosexuality. With Tim being openly Christian, and despite his voting record of the topic, he had this perceived weakness, and the media were not quick to exploit it - what exactly were his views on gay sex? And so, just when he most wanted to be talking about Brexit (aka the most important issue in UK politics right now, by at least an order of magnitude) found himself embroiled in a media-confected controversy.

Of course, it's not hard to see why the right-wing media took this approach. It's certainly not as if the Sun and the Daily Mail had suddenly converted to become great champions of gay people! But Tim headed the only major Britain-wide party to stand against Brexit, and so posed at least some threat (no matter how small).

And, unfortunately, those on the left are disastrously fragmented. Seriously, we see it all the time - you either have to completely ideologically pure, or you are the very devil. (Which is made extra tricky since different factions within the left have different stances, some of them mutually exclusive.) Which is why the right almost always wins - "well, I like almost everything they stand for, but I couldn't possibly vote for someone who..."

Poor Tim never really stood a chance.

What was very interesting, though, is that Theresa May is also openly a practicing Christian, and has a far more patchy voting record on LBGTI rights than Tim Farron and yet, somehow, Robert Peston neglected to ask her about the same topic. Despite, incidentally, promising to do exactly that when he appeared on "Have I Got News For You". She did get asked the question, by Andrew Marr, but only a week later, after she'd had plenty of time to be well briefed on how to answer. And she most certainly didn't face the same hounding on the subject.

The reality is that most of the media don't give a damn about Tim Farron's (or Theresa May's) Christian beliefs, or indeed his beliefs as regards LBGTI rights. They're interested in the rest of their politics, and will use anything and everything to discredit their opponents. I suppose all's fair in love and war...

Except that that has a really horrible implication. If that is indeed the case, then that means that the 'ideal' politician is a vacuous amoral psychopath, who will adopt whatever position it takes to win and only those positions required to win, and who will studiously avoid any underlying beliefs or principles because they might be used against them.

If there's a lesson to be learned from Tim Farron it's this: we get the politicians that we deserve.