Thursday, June 21, 2018

The mysterious Darren Grimes


Who is this paying tribute to Charles Kennedy in a BBC Newsbeat interview from June 2015?
"He would have been great in the upcoming EU referendum - he won't be known just for [his problems]. He was so much more than that." 
Why would he have been so good in the EU referendum? 
"He was always pushing for the party to be an internationalist voice. 
"He believed that in an increasingly globalised world, having Britain in Europe was the only way forward. 
"And I think that's the message the party needs pushing. And he was one of the first people to get out there and voice that."
An unremarkable, loyal Liberal Democrat view you might think.

In fact it belongs to Darren Grimes, who was to leave the party a year later and join the Conservatives because he was a "classical liberal".

He went on to head an organisation called BeLeave during the EU referendum. It was supposedly wholly independent of Vote Leave, but its funding and campaigning are now under scrutiny.

It was a remarkable transition, but we may have an intermediate form of Darren Grimes in a Lib Dem Voice article written a month after his Newsbeat interview.

There he appointed himself to speak for an entire generation and backed Norman Lamb for leader.

Which reminds us that Mark Gettleson and Christopher Wylie from Vote Leave both worked alongside Grimes on Norman's 2015 leadership campaign.

It's all very mysterious.

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