Vince Cable: It's Taking Time To Rebuild Lib Dems After General Election Defeats
16 March 2019, 15:50 | Updated: 16 March 2019, 15:56
The leader of the Liberal Democrats admitted that it's "taking time" to rebuild his party after it suffered losses in both the 2015 and 2017 General Elections.
Sir Vince Cable, who announced last year that he intended to step down as the Liberal Democrat leader 'once Brexit is resolved or stopped' told Matt Frei that he would be happy to hand down to the "next generation" only if there is not a general election in the immediate future.
"I'm standing until we have the local elections," he said. "I'll see us through that and hopefully we'll do very well and then hand over to the next generation."
But when asked whether his party's specific Brexit policy has anything to play on where the Liberal Democrats stand in opinion polls, Sir Vince said his party "might do very well" based on its belief the UK should remain in the European Union.
Sir Vince said: "If there were a general election fought around the issue of Brexit, we might do very well.
"But I think at the moment, most people are treating Brexit as a massive but separate issue from party allegiances.
"We would ultimately benefit from the principled and clear position that we've taken, particularly in relation to Labour.
"We do pick up that a lot of young people who got behind Jeremy Corbyn at the last election have given up on them, and we could benefit from that.
"At the moment party alignments were as they was, and I put that down to the fact that we had two bad elections in 2015 and 2017.
"It's taking time to rebuild the base of the party, we're doing that and we're doing very well in local elections and i think that will be translated into something nationally but it does take time."
The Liberal Democrats lost 49 seats in the 2015 election after they backed the Conservatives in a coalition government following the 2010 election.
The party then only gained 4 seats in the snap election Theresa May called shortly after triggering Article 50.
