English local election results will be pouring in throughout the day. Lib Dem Voice will try and keep you abreast of what’s happening across the country, as we did throughout Thursday night with our open thread – many thanks in particular to those commenting who were able to break the good news that the Lib Dems had taken majority control of Bristol City Council amid disastrous results for Labour. Please do keep the news coming in from wherever you live.

As at 9.50 am, the BBC results scoreboard is telling me that the Lib Dems are the only party showing …

From Saturday’s Liberal Democrat Presidential Election count at Cowley Street: Ros Scott’s acceptance speech.

Special bonus scenes: The announcement of the result, clips of Chandila Fernando and Lembit Öpik and the promise of a new First Kitten. (6:34)

Lembit Opik, the runner-up in the Lib Dem presidential election, has issued this gracious response to the result and explained his plans for the future:

I congratulate Ros for her clear victory. If Barack Obama had employed Ros Scott as his campaign manager, he’d have won by even more than he did! As a seasoned local government campaigner Ros has reflected and represented the needs of the Party. Her insights are things which she can now put into practice. I know she will do her absolute best to achieve exactly this.

Chandila Fernando ‘the Troubleshooter!’ has impressed a huge number of people with his strategic look at what the Party does well and how it could do better. His outspoken mission to introduce a more professional and externally orientated approach is tremendously valuable and we need to see how best to implement his suggestions.

I thank my team for a clear, honest and genuine campaign. We got on with the job of putting forward our proposition, and what we intend to do for the Lib Dems. We kept it positive and we ‘kept it real.’ The best way I can pay you back is by living up to your political expectations as we pursue our inspiring agenda within the Party.

That’s the question after Ros Scott’s landslide victory in the race to become party president. Lembit is, without doubt, one of the party’s stars: he has charisma, a sense of humour, a strong liberal streak, and is a terrific speaker.

And yet somehow all that talent, all that energy, seems to be channelled in an unfocused campaign to become … well, who knows what? Lembit resigned from the Lib Dem shadow cabinet to stand as President, and so, for the moment at least, he has no official role within the party. He said it was the role he had always …

Well, I’m not going to pretend that the Lib Dem Voice members’ surveys predicted the outcome of the party presidential race within a statistical margin of error. But it is interesting to see – in the first test of the surveys in an internal election – that they were reflective of how the wider membership actually voted.

October survey:
Chandila Fernando – 3%
Lembit Opik 10%
Ros Scott – 61%
I don’t know yet, but will definitely vote 23%
I won’t be voting – 3%

There is one measure on which the LDV members’ surveys are certainly unrepresentative of the membership (sadly): while in …

I’m at Cowley Street, at the election count for the next President of the Liberal Democrats.

The count has just been completed and the result is as follows:

Ros Scott: 20,736 votes (72%)
Lembit Opik: 6247 votes (22%)
Chandila Fernando 1799 votes (6%)

Commenting, the new Liberal Democrat Party President, Ros Scott said:

I’m really proud to belong to a Party in which every member has a chance to vote for the person they want to run the internal management of the Party.

This campaign has given Liberal Democrats the opportunity to have a robust

…

1. Anyone can become a (“registered supporter”) if they are on the electoral register in the UK and sign some form of statement saying they are a supporter of the Liberal Democrats.

2. This data would be centrally collated – although obviously shared with local parties – on a database package that could be deployed for campaigning and fundraising purposes.

3. Once the system had been successfully implemented, which may take some months (at least!) the party’s constitution should be reviewed in order to attempt to enfranchise these supporters into the party’s decision-making process. This might start with consultation and …

One of the roles of the President is to be the bridge between the members and the centre. That’s why I’ve promised to:

We need to evaluate what we offer members – too many feel they are “focus fodder” or a source of donations. We need to create a …

I’ve made a specific manifesto commitment to use my Presidency to measurably increase the membership by 2010. Recruitment is one of my areas of specialist interest across the last 17 years. I made the first three recruitment training videos for the Lib Dems – one of them has even achieved a degree of cult status! I’ve just completed another one and it will be released at the end of the year.

I’ve also travelled the country training individuals in recruitment techniques, based on the famous Five Point Plan which we pioneered and promoted almost two decades ago. It still works today …

Lib Dem Voice has invited party presidential hopefuls Chandila Fernando, Lembit Opik and Ros Scott to make their pitches for how they’d improve Lib Dem membership. In a series of articles, they will set out their ambitions and how they would deliver on them.

You can find out more about how to vote in the election for party president here.

Elsewhere on this site, Mark Pack has recently argued why fears of decline in membership for all political parties may have been over-hyped.

The new edition of Liberator magazine includes a questionnaire of all three candidates for the Liberal Democrat presidency.

We asked the following six questions:

Q.1 – What relevant experience will you bring to the presidency?

Q.2 – The presidency has three functions that do not necessarily sit well together – representing the party to the leadership, acting as a figurehead at functions, and chairing the Federal Executive. Which of these will you be best at, and which worst?

Q.3 – Will COG (the Chief Officers Group proposed by the Bones Commission) make the party run more smoothly or will

…

A fairly extraordinary press release has been issued by Lembit Opik – one of the three Lib Dems standing for the post of party presidency which will be decided by an all-member ballot within the next few weeks – demanding an end to an alleged “conspiracy” in the party against his candidacy.

I’ll reproduce the whole release below, but here’s the part which will cause some sharp intakes of breath:

If anyone is conspiring against me I ask them to stop … I don’t agree with conspiracies in the Liberal Democrats. That’s why I backed former leader Charles Kennedy to the end – I was appalled by the perceived internal campaign against him. That’s why I defended Ming Campbell up to his moment of resignation, in the face of a whispering campaign against him too. I still refuse to play any part in such negative campaigning.”

Quite why Lembit should feel it’s appropriate to rake over the ashes of the Kennedy and Campbell resignations in a way that paints the party in quite such an unattractive (and, in my view, misleading) light is beyond me. To do so in a campaign for a post which is, above all, about uniting the party and moving it forwards smacks of appallingly poor judgement.

Editor’s note: Lib Dem Voice has volunteered to remain neutral in internal party elections. However, such defensive statements by a candidate which serve only to feed the anti-Lib Dem narrative of much of the media is, I believe, reckless. I hope this is the last we’ll see of it from Lembit’s campaign.

The full press release is below:

At the start of last week, Lib Dem Voice emailed the members of our private forum (open to all Lib Dem members) inviting them to take part in a survey, conducted via Liberty Research, asking a number of questions about the current state of British politics, especially as they affect the Lib Dems. Many thanks to the 181 of you who completed it.

Today we look at the race to become the next president of the Liberal Democrats. LDV asked: Three candidates are standing for the presidency of the Liberal Democrats: Chandila Fernando, Lembit Opik MP, and Baroness …