Every four years Londoners elect the Greater London Authority in the form of the Mayor of London and the 25 members of the London Assembly. As it happens the elections due in 2020 were postponed a year, so when the elections take place in May 2024 the current incumbents will have been in place for just three years.
The main focus is on the election of the Mayor of London, which for the first time will be chosen using First Past the Post. In the past there has been a supplementary vote, so voters could express a second preference. That changed with the Elections Act 2022, most remembered for the introduction of voter ID. But there were some other nuggets buried in the Act, including this regressive move away from the supplementary vote for elections for Mayors and Police Commissioners – itself a rudimentary type of PR – to First Past the Post.
The London Assembly holds the Mayor to account, and its 25 members are selected using the Additional Member system. London is divided into 14 largish constituencies, each of which elects one member to the London Assembly, using First Past the Post.
The 14 constituency members are then topped up with 11 members from the party lists. Voters select one party list – they have no choice about the candidates on each list or the order in which they appear, which will have been determined by the parties themselves using their own internal selection methods.
All that is a preamble to the news that London Lib Dems have begun the process for selecting candidates for next year. Later today the list members will be announced. In the past all our Assembly members have come from the list so the candidates and the order in which they lie is pretty significant. And this time Caroline Pidgeon is standing down, after 16 years on the Assembly and 6 years as Leader of our small but perfectly formed group. She was joined by Hina Bokhari in 2021.
We expect to select our constituency and Mayoral candidates in the next few weeks, so the team will be ready to start campaigning across London. We will be watching the South West London seat, which includes Hounslow, Richmond and Kingston, as we came within 4 points of winning it last time.
* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
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12 Comments
Looking forward to a clear explanation for these election results being held secret for a week.
@Mark – I have no insider information but it is usually to allow time for any challenges.
Thanks Mary. But in the past election results have been announced when they concluded – having been properly run. We wouldn’t expect the public around the country to have to wait over a week to hear who their elected representatives were after last week’s local authority elections. That would seem an abuse of power – but that is exactly how the Liberal Democrats treat its members it seems in London.
Mark – Leavinmg aside the time for appeal even a few seconds thought will show you that it wiould have been foolish to announces these while attention was on our excellent local election gains and the Coronation.
Simon – we long knew about national elections and other events. I am sorry you make poor excuses.
There is no excuse for the delay in information being provided to party members.
We are the party of open government – but we treat our members in the dark.
On the reasonable assumption that the London selection rules have the same precautions built into them that the Westminster ones do, there is a period of seven days following the count during which all candidates have to provide written acceptance of the results and any appeals can be lodged. Until this has happened – and until any appeals have been dealt with (if there are any) the results will not be announced. Because – until that point – the results are not conclusive.
There is no nasty conspiracy here, just standard procedure.
These “delays” and reasons given so far are very poor. We really need to treat our members more seriously. Would you expect your council results to be held secret for more than a week to the public? Well, that it how London Liberal Democrat members have been treated
Margaret says: “On the reasonable assumption that the London selection rules have the same precautions built into them that the Westminster ones do, there is a period of seven days following the count during which all candidates have to provide written acceptance of the results and any appeals can be lodged. Until this has happened – and until any appeals have been dealt with (if there are any) the results will not be announced. Because – until that point – the results are not conclusive.”
Really? When were these rules made and more importantly when they were communicated to party members?
With greatest respect we had an election involving all London Liberal Democrats which ended just over 8 days ago and our voting and election procress was surely fine. Who made the decision that candidates who were not elected can delay election results to party members ? And if there was a clear decision to delay in providing election results for such a long period after a period – shouldn’t members been told in advance that would be the case?
Everything about this whole electoral process does not look right. Please don’t treat party members as idiots.
So, 24 hours on, where are these results?
“We will be watching the South West London seat, which includes Hounslow, Richmond and Kingston, as we came within 4 points of winning it last time.” Well one of our list candidates will be watching it very closely. If we win the constituency, we lose one from the list.
And still no information given to party members.
It does strike me that the rules are quite clear here. Article 65 of the GLA Selection Rules states:
“The result will only be declared when all the candidates accept the result or when the deadline for appeals has passed without appeal, and after any appeal has been decided.”
That suggests that either there has been an appeal or that not all candidates have formally accepted the result.
An inspection of the Selection Rules indicates that these represent Version 2.3, approved by the London Regional Executive on 31 December, bar one adjustment which doesn’t impact upon the post-election procedure.
It isn’t easy to locate a copy of the London Region Constitution but I very much suspect that the responsibility for drafting the Selection Rules lays with the Regional Executive and, in particular, the Regional Candidates Committee – it did when I was Regional Secretary over a decade ago.
But I note that the Election Regulations were on the agenda for the Regional AGM in November. If the potential seven day delay was a problem, perhaps someone should have raised it then?
As very much a non-Londoner these days, my courteously intended advice would be to allow the Returning Officer to get on with their job and, when a result can be announced, I’m sure that they will do so. And, if at the end of the seven day appeal period, no appeal has been received, I’m confident that a result will follow shortly thereafter.