JO Swinson has hit back at her detractors, saying she will lead the Liberal Democrats in her own way, admitting she has had lots of "unsolicited advice" during the campaign, including a tip to wear lower-cut tops.
The Liberal Democrat leader, who has watched her party fall in the opinion polls – in October it was polling around 19 and 20 points, now it is 12 or 13 – explained how people had been advising her to speak and dress differently. But she insisted she would be "true to myself".
Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Ms Swinson, who is fighting to retain her seat in East Dunbartonshire, said: "I get lots and lots of unsolicited advice. I'm not short of people telling me that I should speak differently or wear different shoes or wear different earrings. Or in one case, somebody suggested that I should wear lower-cut tops.
"I mean as if that's going to be the thing that changes the poll rating. I'm not short of unsolicited advice."
Asked if the "advice" was coming from her own election team, she said: "Not in my election team, but as I say, I do get these gems of advice that come to me.
"I am who I am,” the 39-year-old Scot declared, “and some people will not like the way that I dress or talk or my accent or whatever. And fine. In a sense that's their problem.
“I'm going to stand here, do the best that I can arguing for the positions that I believe in because I do believe our politics can be better. And I'm going to be true to myself in the way I do it," she added.
Earlier, as her party published a bill that would pave the way for a People’s Vote in the next Parliament, Ms Swinson, asked if the Lib Dems' policy to revoke Brexit was off the agenda, seemed to suggest it now was.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I’m saying the most likely way we can stop Brexit is through a People’s Vote and the Liberal Democrats have led the campaign for a People’s Vote for three and a half years.”
The party leader stressed that scrapping Brexit was only possible “in the circumstances of a Liberal Democrat majority government, which would, of course, in itself be democratic. But where we are right now, obviously, that doesn’t look likely.”
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