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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: We are now joined from Cumbria by the President of the Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron. Should you not have been the ones, should your party not have been the ones pointing out to Mr Cameron that he really needed to build consensus here and that there were huge risks in rushing headlong into an attack on Syria?

TIM FARRON: Well we aren’t going to rush headlong into an attack on Syria and one of the reasons is that many of us put pressure to ensure that the UN route was gone down, that there was no immediate military attack and, let’s remember, unlike Iraq, Parliament got it’s say. It was provided with all the evidence that was available and the government has accepted the will of Parliament. I personally took the view that this was not the time to take military action, that all of the routes needed to be pursued first, that we were likely to make a humanitarian situation worse rather than better by intervening. I have to say, despite all of that, I have rarely been prouder of Nick Clegg this week because I think it’s good for leaders to challenge not just their own party’s but the country to try and take stock of serious situations. When all’s said and done, he did that and I disagreed with him on a couple of points and felt in the end that I couldn’t support the government but no, I think he did an incredibly good job this week and in a democracy you want bold leadership and you want those very same leaders to be able to be big enough to accept the will of the people or the will of Parliament.

DM: But do you really think he did a good job? I mean reports – you were at that meeting weren’t you, the meeting before the vote on Thursday and we hear in the media from some Lib Dems present who took the same view as you that Nick Clegg spoke to them like children, that it was rather a rancorous meeting. Were you at the same meeting?

TF: Of course I was and it was not rancorous and he did not do that at all. I thought he spoke with real passion and compassion. His motivation in all of this was outrage at what had happened to the innocent people of Syria in this appalling chemical attack and I think we should be pleased that our leaders have a heart for those people who are in desperate circumstances. You have got to remember that’s what the Liberal Democrats are like as a party – you have seen a lot of Paddy Ashdown over the last few days and I guess Nick’s leadership this last week or so has been very reminiscent of Paddy’s time as leader. Paddy always challenged the Liberal Democrats as well as the party over Kosovo, over Hong Kong passports, over climate change – he is a leader and not a follower. I guess what we saw this week, and I am also aware that Ed Miliband changed his position five or six times during the week, the was willing to sign up to something much stronger than the motion that was originally defeated in Parliament and yet he kept changing his mind – I think Ed has shown himself to be a follower this week and Nick a leader and you don’t always get your own way and you have to be big enough to accept it.

DM: Hold on a minute, we know the sequence of events. Mr Clegg and Mr Cameron, as the two senior figures in the coalition, before they knew which way Mr Miliband was going to go, agreed on whatever that motion was going to be that they wanted to put before Parliament, whether or not an immediate attack or an imminent attack on Syria could be carried out and this is the key question for the Liberal Democrats isn’t it – does that not burn up whatever kudos you had from 2003 when you were the only major party to take a principled stance against attacking Iraq?

TF: You have to remember we were also the only major party that took the principled stance to oppose the outrage that was going on in Kosovo, seven or eight years earlier. We are not a pacifist party, we’re a party that believes in international law and injustice and in 2003 the Labour party outrageously took us into an illegal war in Iraq, the consequences of which we are still suffering from and in the mid-1990s, in a very different scenario, in Kosovo where genocide was going on and only because of sustained pressure by the Liberal Democrats did the West end up taking action that prevented that. So we are not a party that will be dog in a manger or one-sided, whether we take action or not, the important thing is does the action you take constitute an advance in protecting the humanitarian situation and is it within international law? Will it make things better or worse? And our judgement this week, my view is and the view of many of my colleagues is that we don’t rule out taking intervention in international situations, we do take the view that what you do must be done through correct process, through the UN, with the broadest possible coalition and above all else it must not make a bad humanitarian situation worse.

DM: Okay, Mr Farron, thank you very much for your time. Tim Farron there, Liberal Democrat President.