2 months of campaigning, 25 hustings, 20,000 miles covered by the candidates to attend 100 events (according to the Guardian, anyway) — the leadership election comes to an end today, as the ballots are counted and the result is declared.
The count itself will take place at the offices of Electoral Reform Services in London, attended by a select group. The result will then be posted first on the Lib Dem Twitter feed and Facebook page, hopefully sometime between 4 and 5pm.
The new leader will then make his first speech to a gathering of party members at Islington Assembly Hall in London this evening at around 7pm. The event is being filmed by broadcasters so hopefully it will run live on one of the news channels or online.
* Nick Thornsby is a day editor at Lib Dem Voice.
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10 Comments
Best of luck to both. My money is still on Tim, but I think it will be closer than a lot of the polls have suggested.
Please will each leadership candidate announce that he is willing to work under the other as Deputy Leader
and please will all the MPs expedite that in the cause of party unity, putting aside personal ambition/s.
Please will the winning candidate immediately announce an important job for the other, such as health or housing.
With the number of MPs we have we cannot afford to waste any.
No way! We need both candidates to say they support appointing a female and/or BME Deputy Leader from outside the Commons.
Yes we need desperately to put women into prominent roles as spokespeople/ prominent roles within the party if we are begin to gain some traction and show that we are not all white middle class men (to which I have to plead guilty!)
I agree with Ruth.
@Ruth Bright “We need both candidates to say they support appointing a female and/or BME Deputy Leader from outside the Commons.”
We need both candidates to say they support appointing the best person for the job.
Yes to Richard Underhill’s: ‘Please will each leadership candidate announce that he is willing to work under the other’ but not the rest of it – instead yes also to Ruth Bright.
An ‘official’ national deputy outside the Commons makes sense. The efeated leadership candidate can be given a broad brief of substance and speak frequently, thereby becoming de facto Commons deputy.
Everyone could see that first Hague and then Osborne have been effectively deputy Tory leaders over the last 7 years; they haven’t needed the title.
Are we allowed to bring non-member friends to the rally?
Looks like it is expected about 5 now
http://www.libdems.org.uk/leadership-election-update
George Osborne is First Minister as well as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Deputy Prime Minister in all but name, as Peter Mandelson was under Gordon Brown. We will see who deputises next time David Cameron misses PMQ.
Ruth Bright, please move a constitutional amendment at conference.
The person known as Deputy Leader is actually the deputy leader of the MPs, drawn from and elected by the MPs.
There are others in the Lords, for the MEPs, councillors, etc.
On other threads i have blogged that the rules should be changed so that the next leader could be drawn from outside the Commons, so that Kirsty Williams, Caroline Pidgeon or Catherine Bearder could stand if they want to. If there is sufficient support the rules could be changed at spring federal confernce without criticising the existing leadership.