The mouse clicks are in, the votes have been counted – and Brian Paddick has been the pick of Liberal Democrat Voice’s readers to be the party’s London Mayor candidate.
The results were:
30% Brian Paddick
18% Lynne Featherstone MP
10% Greg Dyke
9% Lord Navnit Dholakia
8% Lembit Opik MP
8% Sarah Teather MP
3% Paul Burstow MP
3% Simon Hughes MP (the party’s 2004 candidate)
2% Susan Kramer MP (the party’s 2000 candidate)
10% A N Other
Lynne Featherstone was running top of the poll until she ruled herself out.
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5 Comments
hat tip: http://liberalimafia.blogspot.com/2007/08/shiny-happy-policeman-holding-guns.html
Hmm I think he’s got a good chance of bringing it, bets on whether we can beat the Tories?
I know this is going to be unwelcome scepticism, however getting 30% in an on-line poll when you are the only declared candidate in the race is not an inspiring start.
I’ve not yet seen Brian Paddick perform in a political context, so I’m reserving judgement, however we have just completed a by-election against another outsider candidate who looked great on paper and blew up spectacularly, so a little less rahrah and little more credible analysis of the case for Brian would be useful.
We have had a former senior policeman as a candidate before, and that was John Alderson in Teignbridge in 1983.
Alderson was 8,000 votes adrift (in a new seat we now hold), so neither an impressive result nor a total washout.
I think the lesson of Teignbridge is that hard work on the ground counts far more than celebrity status.
Having said that, Ray Mallan (as in independent) has been elected and re-elected as Mayor of Middlesborough.
Brian Paddick is detested by the moral right and, of course, the Police. What the rest of the electorate makes of him remains to be seen.
His “coming out” while a serving police officer was courageous, of course, and his cannabis policy in Brixton was perfectly right.
His first real challenge will be to work with party volunteers (a very different environment from the police force).
And his second challenge will surely be to address the public as a politician, rather than merely declaim whatever it is that the Police wants to tell us about this or that operation (won’t do as London Mayor).
The important thing to remember in such situations is that it doesn’t much matter what the far right thinks – They weren’t going to be voting Lib Dem anyway!