Welcome to the final instalment of our most read posts of 2020. For those of you late to the “countdown”, the earlier posts can be found by following the following links;

• posts 20-16
• posts 15-11
• posts 10-6

It would be naive to suggest that the 2019 General Election campaign was a success and, for good or ill, much of the blame fell upon Jo Swinson and her advisors. In the fifth most read post of 2020, Paul Walter highlighted the views of the former Chief Executive of the Party, and former MP for North Devon, Sir Nick Harvey. He wasn’t particularly supportive…

At number 4, we noted Jo’s response to defeat, looking back at what might be fairly said to have been an eventful decade. She suggested that she might not be finished either…

As the pandemic took hold, Government advice became less and less clear. Funny really, because the one thing they were supposed to be good at was messaging… In our third most read piece, Paul Walter updated readers on what was a reasonable distance to drive for exercise.

The Party adopted a definition of transphobia in September, and the post from Candy Pierce, Sheila Ritchie and Alice Thomas explaining it became our second most read post, having attracted attention from beyond our normal readership. Some of them weren’t very friendly, but given that they almost certainly weren’t likely to be Liberal Democrat supporters anyway, perhaps that wasn’t a surprise. For the record, the Editorial Team stands by the definition.

And that takes us to the most read piece in 2020, one which, quite frankly, we’d rather have not published. In June, the former Party President and sensational winner of the 1993 Christchurch by-election, Diana Maddock, passed away at the age of 75. The comments reflect how much she would be missed by so many.

Finally, I’d like to thank you, our readers and contributors, for helping to make Liberal Democrat Voice what it is today. Without readers, there would be little purpose to keeping the thing going, and whilst we may have our disagreements, the cause remains a valuable one. It”s important to remember that sometimes…

* Mark Valladares is a member of the Editorial Team of Liberal Democrat Voice.