Jo Swinson

Joanne Kate Swinson (1980–), better known as Jo Swinson, is the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, taking over from Vince Cable in 2019, and resigning five months later, still in 2019. She led the Lib Dems to campaign hard against Brexit, although it's unclear exactly what they were campaigning for, seemingly taking the strategy of every theoretical position at the same time — whether it's ignoring the 2016 Brexit referendum and simply revoking Article 50, whether it's holding a second referendum, or whether it's vocally supporting literally any Boris Johnson deal so long as he pinky swore to hold a second referendum.[4] But a Jeremy Corbyn interrim government, the only legitimate way a second referendum could have actually been held,[5][6], was out of the question.[7]

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“”If a Liberal Democrat majority government is elected, then we should revoke Article 50 and I think it's about being straightforward and honest with the British public about that.
—Jo Swinson, September 2019[2]
“”Boris Johnson is determined to have a general election, but the best way to resolve the Brexit chaos is to have a people’s vote and give the British people the final say about their future.
—Jo Swinson, October 2019[3][note 1]

As a result of a self-contradictory Brexit stance, being yet another leader from the Con-Lib coalition, and even Remain voters hating her the more they saw of her,[8] Swinson, led the Lib Dems to yet another catastrophic election defeat, not only seeing their seat total fall from 21 MPs to 11, but also losing her own seat to the Scottish National Party (SNP), forcing her to resign with immediate effect. This has made her the shortest elected Lib Dem leader in history, only being in power for less than 5 months. Rather than working with the Labour Party to install Corbyn as a temporary Prime Minister, Swinson chose to back the general election that destroyed both Labour and her party, giving Boris Johnson a supermajority of seats, and full power to do whatever kind of Brexit he wanted. In an election where both parties had gone farther to their ideological extremes than ever before in the Lib Dems's history, Swinson led the sole centrist party (that mattered) to lose seats. Some have used polling statistics to say this signifies the death knell for British centrism,[9]. However she was just that bad a leader, not to mention a hypocrite.

Notes
  1. 'Straightforward and honest', huh?
gollark: In any case, you can spy for a country without being born there...
gollark: Fixed!
gollark: In what way?
gollark: I'm just not sure how to elegantly handle triggering unlocks, sort of thing.
gollark: I mean, the saving is pretty easy, they can go in the indexedDB like everything else.

References
  1. Twitter.
  2. "Liberal Democrat party to consider scrapping Brexit", BBC News, 14 September 2019
  3. "Lib Dems in renewed push for second Brexit referendum vote", The Guardian, 15 October 2019
  4. Twitter. Alt link /w video broken
  5. "There is only one route out of the Brexit maze and Jeremy Corbyn must lead the way", Will Hutton, The Guardian, 6 October 2019
  6. "For those who want to stop no deal, Jeremy Corbyn is the only hope", Gary Younge, 4 October 2019
  7. "Jo Swinson says Corbyn cannot become temporary PM", YouTube, 15 August 2019
  8. "Has familiarity of Jo Swinson bred contempt?", YouGov, November 20 2019
  9. "The Center Blows Itself Up: Care and Spite in the ‘Brexit Election’", David Graeber, YouGov/NYT Daily, 13 Janurary 2020


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