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Tim Farron misses a golden opportunity to compare Cameron's Britain to Nazi Germany

By Paul Goodman
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Today's papers have reported Tim Farron's remarks on Sky yesterday, where his interview followed an earlier one with William Hague.  The Foreign Secretary had been questioned about the current atrocious events in Syria.  Farron said:

“Isn't it ludicrous you were talking to William Hague about many undemocratic countries overseas and here we are and half of our legislature are being appointed and not democratically elected?”

The aspirant Liberal Democrat leader is evidently right.  The non-election of members of Britain's second chamber is clearly comparable to the massacre of innocent people in Homs.

It is also disgraceful that Farron's party has to date been unable to introduce to the Lords what the people rejected in a referendum for the Commons - namely, a reformed electoral system that would give his party a permanent monopoly on power.

None the less, Farron - whose speech to last year's Liberal Democrat conference was so mercifully shorn of opportunism - missed a trick yesterday.

He would do well to learn from that old master, Chris Huhne (remember him?), who so aptly compared Sayeeda Warsi to Goebbels.  I promise Farron that drawing a parallel between their coalition partners and nazis goes down a storm with the Liberal Democrat base.

As far as I'm aware, Huhne never mentioned Cameron in the same sentence as Hitler, and firming up the parallel with Assad would obviously be rather feeble.

So wouldn't establishing a link between Britain's present-day Prime Minister and Germany's once-time dictator be in order for Farron? There may also be future opportunities to compare, say, Iain Duncan Smith to Himmler, Eric Pickles to Goering, and Theresa May to Eva Braun.

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