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SOPHY RIDGE: With me now in the studio is the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron, thanks very much for being with us this morning.

TIM FARRON: Morning Sophy.  

SR: Now your party wants a second referendum on any Brexit deal, so is this how democracy works then, if you don’t like the result the first time round you just keep voting until you get it right?

TIM FARRON: Well I would say that democracy also does most definitely mean that you keep going, if you lose you keep fighting for what you believe in but I’m going to be really pedantic and pull you up.  It’s not a second referendum, the referendum that we had in June gives the government a mandate to go and negotiate departure from the European Union, what I’d argue is that at the end a deal will be arrived at by Theresa May and it is simply a question as to who signs it off, who gives the final stamp of approval – is it Theresa May herself, is it the government, is it parliament or is it the British people?  And if you believe like us that it should be the British people then the only way to end this in a democratic way and to achieve closure is to allow there to be a referendum on the terms of the deal at the end.  

SR: You could argue that there were a lot of people in Richmond Park who didn’t like the result of that by-election that the Lib Dems won, are they going to get another vote on that?

TIM FARRON: Yes, it’s called democracy, there’s a general election in three or four years’ time so yes, of course they are and the idea that you somehow go away and cower under a rock and have to pretend you don’t think what you think just because you lost an election is a nonsense, is an affront to anybody who supports democracy but this is a specific issue.  We are very clear that the referendum that narrowly gave a majority for leave in June absolutely gives Theresa May a mandate to go and negotiate departure from the European Union but what it doesn’t do is give her a mandate to make the extreme choice that she has done.  She seems to have assumed that the 52% of people who voted leave, many of whom I know, some of whom I’m related to and who I’ve got an awful lot of time for, she assumes that those 52% of people all agreed with Nigel Farage.  That is an insult to the massive majority of those people, it is the theft of democracy.

SR: The problem is though, there isn’t that much evidence to suggest that people are regretting their vote to leave now that we’re getting a bit more detail.  Can I just …

TIM FARRON: I don't think I was suggesting that, I think what I’m saying is when people voted in June they voted on what was on the ballot people – leave the EU or remain in the EU – and leave narrowly won, so that’s the direction the government should go but it’s not a mandate for her extreme position.

SR: Let’s have a look at this poll, this poll was done after Theresa May laid out her plans for Brexit so there is more information there about where the direction she wants to go in, 52% of people say that Brexit is the right decision, 38% say that they think it’s the wrong decision.  People don’t seem to be changing their minds after getting more details about leaving the single market.

TIM FARRON: That’s people being asked if seven months ago or seven months on from the vote that they cast, do they still mean the vote they cast and that seems to be roughly what people are saying.  The other poll that we’ve seen most recently is the one that showed that 90% of the British people want us to stay in the single market.  Now whether you accept that poll or the poll I’ve just mentioned, the point is we do not know what the deal Theresa May will come back with looks like.  We don’t know what it will look like, she doesn’t know what it will look like so it seems very wrong that the deal that we will have to live with as the United Kingdom for the next half a century let’s say, should be something that is stitched up in the modern version of smoked filled rooms between Brussels and Whitehall and imposed on the British people.  Someone will choose whether that deal is right or wrong, we say it should be the people of Britain, I don’t see what’s wrong with that.

SR: I just want to pick you up a little bit more though on this idea that people don’t like Theresa May’s plan, that it’s the Nigel Farage plan if you like because actually it was made quite clear to people what they were voting for in the referendum.  I just want to show you some quotes now that were made during the referendum campaign, here’s Michael Gove: “Outside the single market but have access to it.”  George Osborne: “We’d be out of the single market, that’s the reality, Britain would be quitting.”  And here’s David Cameron, then Prime Minister, “The British public would be voting to leave the EU and leave the single market.”  I put it to you that people knew what they were voting for, they’re not stupid.

TIM FARRON: Of course they’re not stupid, but how very selective of you.  Where was the quote from Nigel Farage over the last 10, 20 years saying Britain should be like Norway or Switzerland?  What are Norway and Switzerland?  Outside the EU but inside the single market.  

SR: But talking about some of the leading figures in the campaign …

TIM FARRON: Daniel Hannan said we should be in the single market, Boris Johnson has been quoted on both sides in one case saying we should be in the single market.  The point is, it’s not an insult to anybody to say that it wasn’t clear on the ballot paper, it wasn’t.  Britain is moving outside the European Union if the trajectory continues as it is, I accept Theresa May has a mandate to negotiate that exit but what she doesn’t have is a mandate to rip us out of every single institution. I’d argue this, if 80% of the British people had voted leave you could make a case for the extreme divisive form of Brexit that Theresa May is pursuing being okay and accepted by the British people.  Given that it was as close as it was, close to being a dead heat, a good Prime Minister who was seeking the unify the country and to put balm on the nation’s wounds would see a consensual Brexit, leaving the European Union but remaining within the single market.  What she has done is to place the right of her own party – doing what David Cameron did and putting her own party’s interests ahead of Britain’s interests and that’s why it is right for us to call for unity and for the British people to have the final say on the deal.

SR: I’m keen to talk about Donald Trump as well, it’s been dominating the headlines this week of course and particularly overnight with this proposed ban on people entering the US from Muslim majority countries.  Do you think it’s right that he’s been offered a state visit to the UK in light of that?

TIM FARRON: The simple answer is no, of course not.  It should be withdrawn, it should never have been made in the first place.  That’s not to say that we are wrong to go and talk to Donald Trump, I’ve often said that in international relations if you only ever spend time with the people you share values with, you will be very, very lonely and achieve very little.  What I am opposed to is Theresa May, when she should have gone over to the States to defend our corner and to stand up to Donald Trump, she has gone over there and held his hand and been seen now to offer him a royal audience here in the United Kingdom.  Given what he has just said over the last few days, supporting torture and supporting a ban on people from many countries coming into the United States, including therefore many British people with dual citizenship – Mo Farah most famously but I can think of plenty of other people including somebody who works for me at my party’s headquarters, a dual national – she should be standing up for British people and British interests, not going over there and tickling his tummy.

SR: And so a quick thought, do you think she was right to go over to the White House at all?

TIM FARRON: I think having conversations with Donald Trump is important, I think the haste with which she went over there betrayed the desperation that she now finds herself in because in cutting herself off from any kind of soft Brexit and therefore reducing her options with the rest of Europe, she now looks desperate and Donald Trump wrote himself in his own book The Art of the Deal in ’87, that the best time to do a deal is when the other guy is desperate.  Donald Trump can smell desperation from 3000 miles away.

SR: Tim Farron, thanks very much.

TIM FARRON: Thank you.