The words of the late Charles Kennedy took centre stage at a Liberal Democrat campaign event yesterday to highlight the case for Britain’s continued membership of the EU.
A video of the former Ross, Skye and Lochaber MP addressing the 2013 party conference was shown before current leader Tim Farron and three of his predecessors warned against a Brexit.
In the speech, Mr Kennedy, himself a former party leader, said: “Europe is part of the DNA of this cause, our movement, this party.”
He was understood to have been looking forward to playing a key role in the campaign to keep the UK in the EU before his death last year.
Making a pitch to young people at Bafta’s headquarters in central London, Mr Farron said the forthcoming poll was too important a decision to simply be a “blue on blue slug-fest between two chaps who went to Eton 30 years ago”.
He added: “If we vote out, there won’t be one referendum, but three or four as we face the break-up of the UK.”
Former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg added: “The Conservatives are inflicting their family row on us but it is not their families’ futures at stake; it is not their jobs at stake.”
Paddy Ashdown accused Leave advocates Boris Johnson and Michael Gove of posing as “working class revolutionaries”.
He added: “Boris Johnson and Michael Gove driving around the country in a German bus claiming to be Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels does stretch rational credibility.”
Ming Campbell argued it was vital that EU countries worked together, adding: “Nigel Farage is a man of privilege, pretending to be on the side of the under-privileged, while dressed from the pages of Country Life”.
