13 Comments

• Bill le Breton 31st May '19 - 8:41am

  “I happen to think that the country is crying out for aLiberal Movement to confront the forces of populism and nationalism”

  I do too.

  We face as a country a huge danger. The road map of where we could be heading is for all to see in the 1930s. Unless the Party focuses like a laser on this task we shall fail and those forces will succeed.

  We must be the leader of that resistance with all our might.

  Let there be no distractions. No vacillation. No hesitation. No diversion..

• Michael Cole 31st May '19 - 8:46am

  I’m torn between supporting Jo or Ed. I have the greatest respect for both of them.

• Gwyn Williams 31st May '19 - 9:59am

  I think you have hit on a new Lib Dem word. “Hunting” instead of “husting”.It might be a better description as long as it does not turn into “hurting” over the next few weeks.

• Richard Underhill 31st May '19 - 11:24am

  Do we get a video of the rally on Lib Dem Voice?

• Neil Sandison 31st May '19 - 12:21pm

  I think Jo and Ed regardless of which one wins are a dream team .the runner up should consider being deputy leader or president after the 23rd July .

• Sonia Barrett 31st May '19 - 12:33pm

  In the interview with Adam Bolton you came across badly. It was only your opinion that mattered and as he said, it was all about you. It actually put me off.

• Lorenzo Cherin 31st May '19 - 3:56pm

  Sonia, not sure why you think this, just having looked at the interview , Jo seemed very confident and highly eloquent.

  It was about her because she wants to lead this party, but she was clear it was about much .

  When she goes way beyond gender equality she is very definitely a leader with wider appeal. In the interview she does this and I am very values oriented, inclusive, non sectarian, if she advances that, she has my vote…

• David Becket 31st May '19 - 5:08pm

  We do not want an MP as President, somebody outside parliament with charisma. Possibly Daisy Cooper

• Ruth Bright 31st May '19 - 7:47pm

  Sonia, Jo could easily be under-rated because she is so relentlessly pleasant and wholesome. It is not easy to maintain all the niceness expected of women and display confidence and leadership qualities at the same time! She manages to walk that awkward tightrope quite brilliantly.

• Yeovil Yokel 31st May '19 - 10:01pm

  I agree, Ruth: to me Jo is a Liberal Lioness – though to be fair to Ed, I won’t make my mind up until the hustings have run their course.

• Richard Underhill 3rd Jun '19 - 8:45pm

  David Becket:
  The Presidency has been used as a stepping stone by Charles Kennedy and by Tim Farron, but it does not need to be.
  After recent election results every mildly ambitious candidate should be reassessing his/her prospects of becoming an MP. We will need lots of them.
  The position of deputy leader is not symmetrical. Jo Swinson currently holds it and if she comes second in the leadership election she can presumably stay in post as deputy leader.
  If she wins the leadership she will presumably cease to be deputy at some point.
  Ed Davey has not said whether he would accept.
  Alan Beith had been deputy to David Steel and did not want to be deputy to Paddy Ashdown. An election is possible.

• Ronald Murray 5th Jun '19 - 8:56am

  Happy to see either Jo or Ed as party leader. As a Scot I feel Jo being leader would be a tremendous boost to the party in Scotland. Possibly causing a number of members to defect to us from the SNP whose only answer to anything is independence. They lost Indy Ref by a super vote majority as opposed to in real terms a slim leave majority in the Brexit referendum. Give them their due they produced an excellent White Paper type document which was missing from the leavers.

  The other option is to follow the Green Party and have joint leaders. Good luck Ed and Jo.

• Peter Brand 12th Jun '19 - 8:11pm

  Sorry I’ve posted this elsewhere, but this seems a more relevant place.

  I wasn’t able to attend myself, but my wife did, and I’m rather concerned at the level of questions the candidates are getting (I hear) at the hustings.
  A lot of questions were ‘what’s your policy on x/y/z?’
  I’m struggling to see the relevance of this. The leader of the Liberal Democrats does not set policy. They actually hardly have any more influence on policy than any other senior member (you know who I mean, the current and former MPs, peers, MEPs). Presumably both Jo and Ed will remain in the LibDems after this contest, whichever of them wins. So they will both continue to have similar influence on policy and what their policy on individual topics would be is pretty irrelevant to this election. If members are concerned about policy, they should come to conference and vote on it.

  The key qualities I’m looking for – and I’d urge all members to consider this – are leadership and marketing.

  Leadership, because it is important that the leader of the party can lead the party. An important part of the role is to to bring all the disparate types that make up LibDems together to work hard for our agreed party policies. They need to be able to do this.

  Marketing, because it is also important that the leader of the party is good at being the figurehead for the party. They need to be very able to handle all the different kinds of public interactions that party leaders have all the time because their success in these interactions (interviews, speeches, PMQs, doorsteppings, panel shows, etc) determines the success of the LibDems.

  So – who is the best person to lead the party? Not a policy issue! I don’t have a strong opinion either way at the moment and I’ll be watching carefully for the next couple of weeks.