The suddenly-noticed performer who may not want to leave the stage - WalesOnline

Tim Farron says he wouldn't rule out leading the Liberal Democrats. But just who is this man, asks political editor David Williamson

LIBERAL DEMOCRAT president Tim Farron has a love of punchlines but his taste for stand-up comedy this week flung him into the headlines.

He took to the conference stage on Sunday evening and told the thronged activists that in "three or four years" a divorce between the Lib Dems and the Tories was inevitable.

Jaws do not usually drop when party presidents make speeches but the 41-year-old Cumbrian MP had set off a firecracker.

Was this a signal that the coalition would collapse in 2014? He roamed the stage like a Friday night comedian at the London Palladium but this was not an off-the-cuff comment.

Was this a gaffe, an audacious publicity stunt, or an invitation for disaffected Tory-loathing Lib Dems to stage a revolution and de-Clegg their party?

Yesterday, he insisted he simply wanted to tell a joke about how under the terms of a coalition divorce the party would get Tory Cabinet minister Eric Pickles at the weekend.

During the fringe interview he seemed chastened and insisted the coalition was a "business partnership" that would last until the 2015 election campaign.

He pledged his loyalty to the party leader, saying there were "absolutely no" circumstances in which he would challenge Mr Clegg.

Then, on leading the Lib Dems, he added: "You never ever say never. But, I've said this a couple of times today, and it might sound rehearsed but I absolutely mean it... if I did get to 80 and I've never been leader I won't lose any sleep."

Mr Farron will leave conference today a political celebrity.

He has a left-field sense of humour (not every politician would choose to describe party members as a "bit like cockroaches after a nuclear war") and his ostentatiously rough corners contrast sharply with the Oxbridge-honed contours of Mr Clegg, David Cameron and Ed Miliband. He comes across as someone with an un-scrambled moral compass (his rebellion on tuition fees displayed a willingness to defy the party hierarchy) yet his blokey manner limits any sense of self-righteousness.

This week's burst of limelight has done nothing to stop him shooting from the hip.

During the fringe event he expressed unease at Asda sponsorship at the conference on the grounds that supermarkets are part of an "unfair system" which results in the exploitation of the "little man".

He also gave a hint of a what a Farron premiership might look like when he expressed a desire to re-visit tuition fees.

Although he acknowledged that colleagues went through "mental torture" before backing the policy he is unrepentant about his decision to rebel.

"My main reason for voting No was because I thought it was about keeping your word," he said.

The party president gave a withering analysis of the Yes campaign's failure to win the May referendum on the Alternative Vote and how it was defeated by the "evil so and sos" on the other side.

This highly energetic, churchgoing Lib Dem scarcely contained his frustration when he said: "Who says the good guys have to be ineffective?"

He had plenty of kind words for Labour leader Ed Miliband, though he thought he seemed rather out of his depth, and he is clearly a creature of the left-end of the liberal spectrum who laments the "utter stupidity of the privatisation of our utilities".

Party conferences can be springboards to greatness. Barack Obama jumped into the political centre-ground when he gave the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention.

It's too early to say whether the party has found a rare talent who can communicate beyond the metropolitan elite or a good-hearted joker with the potential to be a thorn in the side of the party establishment.

He has had more than 15 minutes of fame this week and he is not about to leave the stage.