Leader's vision September Conference

Tim Farron outlined his vision for the Party and the role it can play at Brighton.

I plan to rebuild our party and make us Britain's largest progressive party - an open, tolerant and united opposition to this Conservative Brexit Government. We will be bold, ambitious and we will be ready to grasp any opportunity with both hands.

We'll rebuild our party by continuing to grow - at our lowest ebb in 2014, we had just over 40,000 members. Now, we have more members than at any time this century - but we won't stop there, we will continue to build a movement that can win at every level.

We'll rebuild our party by continuing to win elections - in May, we were the only party to increase our councillors and since the EU referendum we've gained 14 seats, from every party, right across the country. Winning council seats is our chance to shape, lead and serve our communities to put liberalism into practice and our party's revival will be built on victories like those.

And we'll rebuild our party by being the real opposition to this Conservative Brexit Government and as the only party committed to keeping Britain in Europe, with a plan to let the people decide our future in a referendum on the as yet non-existent Tory Brexit deal.

I accepted the leadership of our party because our destiny is to once again become one of the great parties of government, to be the place where liberals and progressives gather to provide the vision, hope, optimism and leadership that our country needs.