Tim Farron

Early life and education

Farron was born in Preston, Lancashire, and educated at Lostock Hall High School and Runshaw College, Leyland, before going on to Newcastle University where he gained a BA in Politics in 1992. In his youth, Farron describes how his bedroom bore pictures of "strange sort of leftwing politicians", including John F. Kennedy and former Liberal Party leader Jo Grimond, as well as former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He was president of Newcastle University Union Society, the first Liberal Democrat to hold the position, in 1991, having joined the Liberal Party at the age of 16. In 1990, he was elected to the National Union of Students' National Executive.

Before his election to Parliament, Farron worked in higher education at Lancaster University from 1992 to 2002 and St. Martin's College, Ambleside from 2002 to 2005.

Positions beginning prior to 2005

Farron contested North West Durham at the 1992 general election, where he finished in third place, behind the sitting Labour Party MP Hilary Armstrong and Conservative Party candidate (and future Prime Minister) Theresa May. He then served on Lancashire County Council from 1993 to 2000 and was also a councillor for Leyland Central ward on South Ribble Borough Council from 1995 to 1999.

Farron was selected to contest the Labour/Conservative marginal constituency of South Ribble at the 1997 general election, and again finished in third place. Thereafter, he was a Liberal Democrat candidate for the North West region in the 1999 European Parliament elections.

At the 2001 general election, Farron contested the Westmorland and Lonsdale seat and finished second, reducing the majority of the sitting Conservative MP Tim Collins to 3,167. He then served as a councillor for the Milnthorpe ward on the South Lakeland District Council from 2004 to 2008.

Westmorland and Lonsdale from 2005 win to 2009

At the 2005 general election, Farron again fought Collins in Westmorland and Lonsdale, and this time won this election by a narrow margin of just 267 votes. He made his maiden speech in Parliament on 25 May 2005. As a new MP, he became a member of the Education and Skills Select Committee and was appointed as Youth Affairs Spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats. In 2005 he founded the all-party parliamentary group on hill farming, of which he was still chair as of March 2015.

During Menzies Campbell's period as the Liberal Democrat leader, Farron was Campbell's Parliamentary Private Secretary. In 2007 he was made Liberal Democrat spokesman for Home Affairs.

Farron resigned from the front bench of the Liberal Democrats on 5 March 2008 in protest at the party's abstention from a parliamentary vote on a proposed Conservative referendum on Britain's accession to the Lisbon Treaty. However he later returned to the party's front bench as spokesperson for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. He is a member of the Beveridge Group within the Liberal Democrats.

2010–2015

In the 2010 general election, Farron achieved an 11.1% swing from the Conservatives, winning by a majority of 12,264 in his historically Conservative seat. This result was against the run of the rest of the party, making Westmorland and Lonsdale one of the few Liberal Democrat strongholds.

On 27 May 2010, Farron announced he would be standing for the position of Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats, made vacant by the resignation of Vince Cable. On 9 June, Farron lost the competition to the former party President, Simon Hughes. Hughes won by 20 votes; having had 38 nominations from the parliamentary party, compared to Farron's 18.

On 16 September 2010, Farron announced he would be standing for the position of President of the Liberal Democrats following Baroness Scott's decision not to seek re-election. He won the election with 53% of the vote, beating fellow candidate Susan Kramer on 47%.

In March 2012, Farron was one of three MPs who signed a letter sent to the Advertising Standards Authority, criticising their recent decision to stop the Christian group "Healing on the Streets of Bath" from making explicit claims that prayer can heal. The letter called for the ASA to provide indisputable scientific evidence that faith healing did not work; Farron subsequently admitted that the letter was not "well-worded" and that he should not have signed it "as it was written".

Farron was one of only eight Liberal Democrats elected nationwide at the 2015 general election. He was considered a favourite to succeed Nick Clegg as Leader of the Liberal Democrats.

Leadership of the Liberal Democrats

In May 2015, Farron confirmed his bid for the Liberal Democrat leadership on BBC Radio 4. On 16 July he won the leadership election with 56.5% of the vote, ahead of Norman Lamb who achieved 43.5%. Farron's first speech at the Liberal Democrat September 2015 Conference in Bournemouth was praised in the press.

At the 2017 General Election, Farron narrowly retained his seat with an 8.4% swing to the Conservatives and a majority reduced to 1.5%, while the Liberal Democrats as a whole increased their seats from nine to twelve, although with a reduced overall share of the vote. Farron announced he would step down as party leader following the election, stating that he had become "torn between living as a faithful Christian and serving as a political leader". He remained as leader until the summer recess in July 2017 and the result of the leadership election, which was won by Vince Cable, who ran unopposed.

Political positions

Among political observers, Farron is widely seen as being of