Anti-Brexit Tulip Siddiq is at risk of losing her seat in parliament to the Tories next week

TWO leading legal silks who have voted for the Liberal Democrats in the past say they are siding with Labour’s Tulip Siddiq at next week’s general election.

Phillipe Sands QC, who once compiled research suggesting Tony Blair could be indicted for war crimes over Iraq which was later turned into a play, told the New Journal: “I think the Lib Dems should step aside here. People who are on the left who are going to take away votes all should’ve. She resigned over Article 50 and deserves my vote for that alone.”

Mr Sands’ support was considered a coup for the Lib Dems in 2010, and he later worked with Lib Dem leaders the late Charles Kennedy and Sir Menzies Campbell. “Once they got into bed with the Tories that was enough for me,” he said.

Meanwhile, Jessica Simor QC, said she had to vote for Ms Siddiq even if it meant she had her membership of the Lib Dems revoked.
“If so, then so be it,” she told the New Journal. “It is not easy to vote Labour because I think they have acted incompetently and made some grave errors on the EU. In the end, you are voting for an individual and Tulip voted against Article 50 and challenged the government. If the Liberal Democrats had a chance of winning in Hampstead and Kilburn, then I’d vote for them here, of course, but there is no prospect of that so I have to vote for Tulip.”

She added: “At this election, nothing is as important as Brexit. It will take away opportunities from future generations which the Conservatives claim to be helping. People will be poorer, people will have less opportunities.”

Kirsty Allan, the Lib Dem in Hampstead and Kilburn, has said on the issue of Ms Siddiq undercutting her party’s anti-Brexit message: “People will make up their own minds in the privacy of the voting booth. But when I’m out on the doorstep or at street stalls I hear from Labour voters that, while they respect Tulip’s position on Brexit, she is standing as a representative of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, and they are really struggling to vote for a party that backed the Tories on Brexit.”