Layla Moran: We have to show we've learnt from what we got wrong in the Coalition

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Here's an interview with Layla Moran you may not have seen. 

Earlier this month she spoke to Simon Barrow from High Profiles. This website interviews prominent figures about their values, beliefs and principles and about the experiences that have formed them.

The results are often more revealing than your average political interview.

Here are a few of the things Layla has to say:

"I spoke Arabic as a child – my first word was daw’, which means ‘light’. [Up to the age of three] I spoke exclusively Arabic with my mum and English with my father, who doesn’t really speak any Arabic at all."

"The way that I approach politics is collaboratively in general, you know, and especially when [our support is] 6 per cent in the last poll I looked at. If we are going to actually achieve anything for people from our current position in Westminster, we have to forge alliances. And that includes with backbench Conservative MPs, incidentally, so I’m proud to chair the all-party group on coronavirus and I’m even more proud that [the former Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union] David Davis is part of it."

"There are some who blame us for that Coalition period, and particularly austerity; and, to be perfectly honest, there are parts of that legacy that I’m not very proud of, either. We can’t ever write it out of our party’s history, and if I’m leader of the party I’ll face questions on it; but I think we need to demonstrate that where we got it wrong we’ve learnt from that and we won’t do it again."

And there is something telling about a former Liberal Democrat leader in one of the questions:

In 2008, when I interviewed Nick Clegg for High Profiles, I asked him whether he saw any tension between economic and social liberalism, and he seemed to be genuinely puzzled by the question.