I did something I had never done before this General Election – I stood as a Westminster candidate for the first time. I’d stood for Holyrood and the Council before, but this was was my UK election debut.

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I loved doing local and national hustings. I loved interacting with voters who contacted me and while out and about.

I thought that the daily Candidates’ Briefings we received were absolutely fantastic. They were written with humour and contained information that was really helpful. They were very clear about what we should (and shouldn’t) be doing. The people in HQ who put them together deserve a lot of praise and should never have to buy their own drink at Conference ever again.

I was selected on 20th May and we thought we had a few months to execute our campaign plan. Two days later, Rishi Sunak popped out in the rain without an umbrella.

So we had to do a lot very quickly, as well as ensure that we helped in held and target seats. I and others from the local party spent a LOT of time in North East Fife, Edinburgh West and Mid Dunbartonshire as well as running two constituency campaigns.

But there’s one final job that all candidates need to do.

This weekend, I completed the survey that all candidates should have been sent about our experience of the General Election campaign as candidates. It’s part of the review process for candidates, and shouldn’t be confused with the party’s review of the General Election campaign. The deadline for completing it is this Friday, 30th August.

This survey came out by email from the Candidates’ Office on 12 August. Mine, because I’m in Scotland,  was written by our Campaigns and Candidates Convener Charles Dundas. English candidates should have had one from Margaret Joachim and Welsh candidates from Julian Tandy.

The reason for this article is just to flag it up. I have found over the past few days that some people either hadn’t had it or hadn’t clocked that they needed to do something with it soon. Candidates need to complete it to stay on the approved list and, frankly, nobody needs to go through the faff of re-applying because they missed out on returning a survey that takes 5 minutes at most to fill in.

So if you were a candidate and the idea of a review survey is completely new to you, do go and search your email and spam for this. If you can’t find it, contact [email protected] and ask for the link.  Remember the deadline is this Friday, 30th August.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social