Stephen Dorrell has joined the Liberal Democrats

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Stephen Dorrell, who was health secretary in John Major's government and a Change UK candidate in this years's European elections, writes behind the Sunday Times paywall:

The slow-motion disintegration of the Conservative and Labour parties is the key political fact of 2019. Brexit is the immediate detonator, but the underlying causes run deeper and create the opportunity to reshape politics.

He goes on to say that this reshapaing

requires liberal Conservatives and social democrats to break cover from their respective parties and join the Liberal Democrats in a big liberal tent. 

It isn’t just a question of “joining the Liberal Democrats”; by joining, their objective is to expand the Liberal Democrats to include fellow liberals from different backgrounds, all of whom are committed to delivering the reform of our politics that is so urgently needed.

And he concludes:

It is time for them to break their shackles and join with the Liberal Democrats to build an effective voice for a modern, liberal Britain. That is what I have done.

Dorrell was Conservative MP for Loughborough and then Charnwood between 1979 and 2015.