Tag Archives: diana wallis

A close escape – and now we should change our Euro-selection rules

By Mark Pack | Published 29th January 2012 - 2:50 pm

This week the Liberal Democrats have had a close escape. Diana Wallis’s sudden resignation as an MEP highlight flaws in the party’s rules for picking a successor.

Those rules aren’t new, but many people (myself included) have not paid that much attention to them in the past. It was only the circumstances of a resignation surrounded by controversy which brought attention to their weaknesses. Weaknesses only side-stepped by the decision of Stewart Arnold not to seek to succeed Diana Wallis.

Most of the events of the last few days are specific to the Diana Wallis resignation – the fallout amongst …

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged | 30 Comments

Diana Wallis MEP’s husband will not take over her seat

By Helen Duffett | Published 27th January 2012 - 9:42 am

The Yorkshire Post reports:

The husband of a Euro MP at the centre of a furious “nepotism” row has bowed to pressure and decided not to take over her Yorkshire seat when she quits next week.

Stewart Arnold, husband of Hull-based Liberal Democrat MEP Diana Wallis, has informed officials he will not be taking over his wife’s post at the EU Parliament, despite being eligible to do so as the party’s second-choice candidate at the last Euro elections.

His announcement follows a week of mounting criticism at the possibility of a husband automatically taking over his wife’s seat. Fellow Lib Dem MEP

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Posted in Europe / International, News | Also tagged , | 29 Comments

Opinion: MEP Diana Wallis resigns – but the European Parliament’s great ‘stitch-up’ continues

By Paul Haydon | Published 21st January 2012 - 1:00 pm

Liberal Democrat MEP Diana Wallis caused an outcry when she resigned yesterday after coming third in the European Parliament (EP) presidential election, especially as her husband Stewart Arnold is likely to take over her seat. Yet underneath this public relations nightmare, which seems more of an unfortunate coincidence than anything else, there lies a deeper and far more worrying story of political corruption. Diana Wallis’ decision to run as a candidate for the election surprised many observers not because they thought she was unlikely to win, but rather because they knew she wouldn’t. The results had already been decided two and a …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , | 13 Comments

How should Diana Wallis be replaced?

By Mark Pack | Published 19th January 2012 - 11:22 pm

A question for Liberal Democrat members to mull… Under the law used for regional list elections, the decision over who should take over following Diana Wallis’s resignation as an MEP is up to the party (technically, the party’s Nominating Officer).

The general assumption in the past has been that if a list member stands down, it is whoever would have got their place on the list that takes over. That is the process followed in the past, such as in deciding Liz Lynne’s replacement as an MEP on her retirement or Lynne Featherstone’s replacement as a GLA member on her election …

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged , | 54 Comments

Transparency is for Lib Dems, too

By Stephen Tall | Published 23rd June 2009 - 9:30 pm

The casual reader of this post – Duff-Verhofstadt drive to federal Europe sees its first Liberal casualty – over at The Yorkshire Guidon blog might not understand its full implication:

Former Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt, in the running to lead the Liberals and Democrats group (ALDE) in the European Parliament, and his campaign manager UK Lib Dem MEP Andrew Duff make no secret of their desire to see a ‘federal Europe’. … Such Federalist credentials are impeccable and yet are starting to spook MEPs in the ALDE group. Today saw the first defection as the widely regarded Finnish MEP from

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Posted in Europe / International, News | Also tagged , , | 7 Comments

Do your MEPs turn up to meetings?

By Mark Pack | Published 26th January 2009 - 9:56 pm

Good news from the Liberal Democrat MEPs with the success this month for Diana Wallis’s campaign to get more information about Euro-MPs’ attendance records published:

[Diana Wallis] welcomed the Parliament’s decision at her instigation to publish on its internet site in collated form information about all Members’ attendance at plenary and committee meetings…:

“Making such public information more accessible is a modest step for the Parliament to take, but it is an important one, particularly ahead of the next elections in June. Citizens need to have the tools to keep their elected representatives to account.” [DianaWallisMEP.org.uk]

Posted in Europe / International, News | 3 Comments