Lib Dem Leadership race: Layla Moran to stand

In an exclusive interview with The Oxford Mail, Ms Moran said she wanted to take the party forward by protecting its internationalist outlook, while making sure the voices of people in her constituency of Oxford West and Abingdon were still heard.

Ms Moran said her decision to stand had been a ‘long time coming’ as her colleagues and voters she met on the doorstep during the 2019 General Election had told her she should stand.

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She said: “Bluntly I wanted and I still want to be putting the constituency of Oxford West and Abingdon first, and residents are the most important thing to me.”

Instead, she thinks being the party’s leader could help her push local issues, including the long-delayed plan to build a new junction at Lodge Hill interchange near Abingdon, up the political agenda.

Ms Moran has campaigned to restore railway services to Oxfordshire.

The 37-year-old said her constituents were ‘the ones who held her fate in their hands.’

The MP was first elected in the 2017 General Election, taking the seat from Conservative MP Nicola Blackwood in that poll by a majority of 816.

In the December poll, she increased that majority tenfold to 8,943.

The last three years, she said, have been an apprenticeship in politics ‘forged in fire’, and now she believes she is ready to take on the challenge of leading her party.

“I have had time to be able to test what my gut tells me is the right thing to do when a big strategic decision comes along and there have been moments over the last three years when I felt frustrated when I wasn’t in charge in order to push through the direction we should have gone as a party.

“I think it was the right thing to do to wait even though there was a lot of pressure for me to stand.”

Ms Moran thinks the Liberal Democrats are facing an ‘existential challenge’ and need to focus on creating a positive vision for the future of the UK.

She said: “We have spoken a lot about what Liberal Democrats at a national level are against but that’s just not good enough, and people want to have a positive vision for the country.

She is also ready to face the heightened publicity that comes with a higher profile job.

In January, Ms Moran came out as pansexual and announced she was in a relationship with former Lib Dem media chief Rosy Cobb, after a Sunday newspaper threatened to out her.

Layla Moran with her partner Rosy Cobb.

Last year she also faced scrutiny in the national media after issuing a statement with the permission of ex-boyfriend Richard Davis admitting she had slapped him while arguing during the 2013 Lib Dem conference.

She emphasised she felt under threat at the time and only took the action as a defensive move.

She said: “Whenever issues like this come up I am the first person to talk about them. What people have told me they appreciate is the openness and transparency of knowing who their politicians are as people.

“The reason I have done all that is because I think people like to know politicians are human.”

After coming out, she said she had a mostly positive response from Oxford West and Abingdon.

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She said: “I do think that the tabloids need to catch up with where people are on the scrutiny of the private lives of politicians, which is bluntly people don’t care; so long as you are delivering for them, so long as you can earn their trust and so long as they realise you are putting them first.”

As Lib Dem leader, she said some of her priorities would be opportunity, education and climate change, based on suggestions from people she had met while visiting different parts of the UK.

But she also said the party is not going to compromise its ‘international values’, and said the reason Lib Dems were dead set against Brexit was because they ‘believe in co-operation’ in all forms.

The MP added she wanted the Lib Dems to make sure a ‘cliff edge’ no deal Brexit was avoided, and to ‘stem the tide’ which had seen politics move away from co-operation with other countries.

Layla Moran and fellow candidates as the 2019 General Election result was announced.

She also said she thought there would ‘come a time’ after a decade or more, when people in the UK might think that rejoining the EU or taking part in another form of international co-operation was in the best interests of the nation.

Ms Moran said the country was likely to see another five years of Conservative rule, with a massive majority.

In that time she said she wanted to promote ‘pragmatic’ cross-party work, and said she had already seen success in the way that different political groups had worked together on the Coronavirus.

“This is hopefully the beginning of a more cooperative, kinder gentler politics which is hopefully more in tune with what voters want than narrow-minded tribal party politics.”

She referred back to her experience of Oxfordshire politics, and how electoral pacts and coalition working had led to local successes for her party.

Ms Moran added: “We have shown locally that that’s what we do and when you do that you win.”

Two other Liberal Democrats have already declared they will stand in the leadership race: Bath MP Wera Hobhouse and Edinburgh MP Christine Jardine.

Nominations open in May, and the final count begins on July 15.