London Liberal Democrats have today announced their team of candidates for the London Assembly top-up list in 2012. Caroline Pidgeon AM topped the poll of London Liberal Democrat members to lead the London Assembly campaign in 2012.
The list is as follows:
- Caroline Pidgeon
- Stephen Knight
- Bridget Fox
- Shas Sheehan
- Jeremy Ambache
- Merlene Emerson
- Emily Davey
- Steve Bradley
- Marisha Ray
- Nick Russell
- Ajmal Masroor
Turnout was 55.6%.
Liberal Democrat MP for Carshalton and Wallington and London Spokesperson Tom Brake said:
The Liberal Democrats have a proud record on the London Assembly of holding the Mayor to account. Our Assembly members have led the fight for better value for money from City Hall, better transport services across London and an end to perks for senior police officers at the Met.
Our list of candidates for 2012 offers Londoners an excellent choice in terms of diversity and equality. They will make excellent additions to our Assembly Team.
I would like to offer on behalf of London Liberal Democrats our sincere thanks to Dee Doocey and Mike Tuffrey for their many years of service to London.
Both Dee Doocey and Mike Tuffrey had previously announced that they would be standing down from the London Assembly in 2012. Dee Doocey is set to be made a member of the House of Lords early next year.
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18 Comments
Is the detailed breakdown of the voting published anywhere yet?
Colin has them (of course):
http://www.cix.co.uk/~rosenstiel/ldelections/10glalstorder.htm
Glad to see Caroline come first, she’s done a good job, and is also an ex-aber student. Also nice to see Bridget do well.
Some excellent candidates. What a pity though the London Party chose to break the Party Constitution and the law by illegally discriminating against two candidates on grounds of their race.
I’m not sure that’s quite true Simon. Section 104 of the Equality Act 2010 came into force on 1st October, and this specifically allows political parties to undertake positive discrimination, so long as it is a proportionate way of reducing inequality. See here: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/part/7/crossheading/special-provision-for-political-parties?view=extent&timeline=true
In the case of the London list, the Regional Party through its proper processes determined that at least 2 of its top 6 candidates should come from an ethnic minority, since this is roughly the proportion of ethnic minorities that exist across London as a whole. Thus the objective of the rule was to ensure that our choice of Assembly candidates was representative of London as a whole.
In any case, since we are unlikely to actually get six list candidates elected in 2012, it’s probably a moot point anyway!
Well said Simon. The fact that Shas made it to fourth place on merit, not because of the tokenistic BME rule, just shows that good BME candidates who work hard can do well without the need for any quotas. In fact, Shas was just 10 votes off crossing the threshold to come third. She ran a fantastic campaign and has been campaigning all over London for several years now. The fact that 2 out of 3 of the top candidates were female also shows the gender rule is redundant.
Excellent candidates, impossible to choose between them in many cases. Some of the candidates I put at 6 or 7 I would happily put at 1 or 2 on a different day.
@Munira I could not agree more. Shas was a great candidate ( i helped her campaign) who demonstrates that ability and energy not tokenism is what will get us more BME candidates.
@Chris – You may be right. discrimination is certainly against our constitution though and for many years being against racial discrimination was a core part of the party’s beliefs.
Simon: the party’s Appeal Panel has ruled on the London selection rules and found that they do not break the party’s constitution.
The fact remains that it would be better if we didn’t have quotas for different types of candidate
So, if we do as well as last time we will, once again, have an all-white group of Assembly Members.
Perhaps Merlene Emerson could be put into The Lords, while it still exists, it seems daft for the Party not someone of such talent.
The party only discriminates in favour of non-whites – and in that way discriminates against a lot of ethnic minorities who just don’t look obviously ‘ethnic’.
What about the large Arabic or Turkish or Jewish communities in London ? Under the rules, a candidate from one of those ethnic groupings would be pushed out of the way for someone less popular who just looked more obviously non-white. Is a photo shoot all we care about when it comes to representation ?
How anyone could describe this as fair, representative or even Liberal is beyond me. We need to make our party more representative. But combining a simplistic view of ethnicity with a rejection of meritocracy and democracy is not the way for a supposedly Liberal party to do it.
@Mark
‘we reject all prejudice and discrimination based upon race, colour, religion, age, disability, sex or sexual orientation and oppose all forms of entrenched privilege and inequality.’
is what the Constitution says. This is discrimination (treating one group differently to another’ based on their race. How are the London rules not going against this?
Many congratulations to all my fellow candidates! I am delighted that we do have a strong and diverse team to campaign for the next GLA election.
The other controversial issue (not mentioned in the thread so far) in this selection contest was the lack of any spending limit on candidates. This meant that a number of the most successful candidates spent big sums of money on direct mail (about £2k for the postage and the posh colour printing enclosed must have cost a few bob too!) to the approx 7,000 London members who had a vote.
This seems wrong to me to allow candidates to spend such large sums of money and gives them an advantage in such selections. I’d be interested to hear views?
Particular commiserations to you Jeremy after coming so close last time.
My view of internal election rules has always been that they should mirror those of public elections: ie no restrictions EXCEPT an expense limit. That way you create a level playing field and encourage campaigning initiative. It doesnt surprise me if we managed to come up with rules that were the complete opposite…
Thank you to everyone who took part in the selection, I’m delighted to be chosen as part of such a strong team.
I’m sure Merel Ece is Turkish, and is (or was?) head of Ethnic Minority Lib Dems.
Does that mean she WOULDN’T be viewedd as an ethnic minority person under our rules for London Assembly ?
If so – that’s just crazy.
I agree with those who thought it was a strong slate of candidates and congratulations to those selected.
Also, I think those who object to rule in relation to ethnic minority candidates may be somewhat missing the point. Why was there a much stronger collection of ethnic minority candidates than we have had previously? I would guess that part of the reason was the existence of the rule which offered hope to some of those who had not had a conventional route to Lib Dem success (part of a successful council group/local party, lots of FOCUS delivering etc etc). I hope they enjoyed their experience of internal party elections and continue to be involved. I think the evidence is that this kind of positive discrimination works in the context of a list and many of us who dislike it think that it is nonetheless worth it (and less objectionable than in the case of a single seat).
Having said that (and with no disrespect intended to the male candidates), when I got my ballot paper, I did think there was a possibility that a male candidate might be the beneficiary of a gender rule to push him up to the top 3 which would have been interesting….
Finally, I agree with those who think there should be expense limits for internal elections and less of the other rules.