Ballot e-mails will be going out shortly for members in London to decide the order of our candidates for the List election for the Greater London Assembly in May 2024. The Assembly has fourteen constituency members and eleven elected on Party lists. So, if our share of the vote gives us four people to be elected on the List, the top four on our list will become Assembly members.
We currently have two GLA members – Caroline Pidgeon and Hina Bokhari, though Caroline has announced she is not standing again.
There are eleven members competing:
- Chris Annous
- Rob Blackie
- Cllr Hina Bokhari
- Michael Bukola
- Professor Kishan Devani BEM
- William Houngbo
- Rabina Khan
- Chris Maines
- Cllr Gareth Roberts
- Cllr John Sweeney
- Cllr Irina von Wiese
and they offer members an experienced and diverse group to choose from. We have eight current or former London Councillors, one current Assembly member, one current Council Leader and one former leader and a former MEP. Whilst nine of the eleven are from South London, it is striking that there is no one from our big active North London local parties like Islington, Camden and Haringey.
There is a relatively high expenses limit of £7,000 and a number of the candidates are running significant campaigns, with their supporters hand delivering letters, phone canvassing and calling on members.
Candidate manifestoes can be found here.
This election will choose some of the most high profile elected Liberal Democrats in the UK – if you are a member in London, please make sure you vote.
Finally, the selection for our candidate for Mayor of London will start later this year.
* Simon McGrath is a councillor in Wimbledon and a member of the board of Liberal Reform.
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6 Comments
Having been one of the small number (a few tens) of people who attended both online hustings, as did Simon, I second his comment on the quality of the members standing. I was, however disappointed that Federal and English Party election rules prevented the Regional Party from recording the hustings so that those unable to be present could watch them later. As there are around 9000 Party Members in London, the vast majority will have little to go on when putting the candidates in order of preference beyond the candidates’ manifestos (and maybe a letter or phone call). We should try to improve on this when it comes to selecting our Mayoral candidate.
There is no such thing as the Greater London Assembly – although it isn’t helped that so many people, including the BBC, mistakenly use that term. There is the Greater London Authority, made up of two parts, the Mayor and the London Assembly – but there is no Greater London Assembly.
I voted this morning, having compared the Manifestos over the last week. This afternoon I got 2 letters from Candidates which seemed to simply reproduce their pieces online.
I found the stuff online a bit bland & lacking in content.
People interested in discussing this and other internal elections might want to join this Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/LDInternalelections2019
Interesting that only three are women and most live South of London.
Would applying the Rooney Rule bring in more efforts from 2024 for 2028.
London has a very diverse population and as a political party we are struggling to make inroads from whence the diverse candidates can be drawn from.
Sadly efforts to debate or just mentioning diversity is met with divisive responses so a healthy conversation to improve inclusion cannot be had.
I honestly remain committed and I hope that in this great liberal democratic movement we belong in, we may be more tolerant.
Now that King Charles has announced he will research Racism during his reign, we may all be helped and start to crawl and progress to walk and improve inclusion.
All 11 candidates are superbe, we are so fortunate to have such a broad calibre of candidates and still there is more we could have added with just as much quality to shine the Lib Dem light.
I echo Laurence Cox’s disappointment that the hustings weren’t recorded for those who had other things to do at the actual time of airing. Is there no pressure to have whatever ruling prevents it being changed (not just Lib Dems internally, but amongst other parties too, if there’s no valid reason to have it in place)?