14 Comments

• Rob F 16th Oct '07 - 11:21am

  Richard,

  Are you targeting the Queen here? 🙂 “Pheelip! I’m not sure I can vite in the Liberal Democrat leadership election!”

• Jonny Wright 16th Oct '07 - 11:24am

  This is silly. I don’t know what the constitution says, but there should definitely be a membership cut-off point, which should be back-dated to a point before Ming’s resignation.

  Otherwise, we open ourselves to the possibility of people (perhaps with ulterior motives) joining specifically with the intention of influencing the leadership election.

• Richard Huzzey 16th Oct '07 - 11:29am

  1 – Rob; I am confident the Queen has hitherto overlooked signing up as a Lib Dem member, and thus is exactly the sort of person who’ll want to join and vote on our next leader. 😉

• Matthew Scott 16th Oct '07 - 12:21pm

  “sign on”?

• Paula Keaveney 16th Oct '07 - 12:39pm

  There is a cut off point. To vote in an internal party election, and that certainly includes selecting candidates and leaders, you have to be a member for a year and have renewed.. in other words at least one years uninterrupted membership. This is being applied, quite rightly, in the Euro contests and in local candidate selections.

• Theo Butt Philip 16th Oct '07 - 12:56pm

  That is not the case. The rules you refer to are English Party rules, they do not apply to the federal party’s leadership election.

• Jeremy Hargreaves 16th Oct '07 - 1:02pm

  Theo is right: those rules do not apply to the election for Leader and President, which are open to all members.

• Anonymous 16th Oct '07 - 1:40pm

  The cut off date is the date when nominations close, i.e. 31st October.

  The English Party rule which imposes the twelve months rule, and which applies to all English parliamentary selections, does not apply to a Leadership election. Part of the rationale for the distinction is that whereas it is very easy to sign up enough members to make a difference in a Parliamentary selection, it would be much more difficult to do so in a Leaderhip election given the much larger size of the electorate.

• nigelashton 16th Oct '07 - 7:53pm

  Leadership elections are an excellent time for recruiting members, especially renewing people who have lapsed over the last couple of years or so.

• totallylibdem 16th Oct '07 - 9:24pm

  nigelashton

  Can you tell me why anyone would want to recruit members to a Party whose MPs have such a poor record of loyalty to its leaders?
  Nick Clegg and Sarah Teather finally finish off the job they started when they conspired to oust Charles

  For their plan to succeed one of them must win this leadership election
  What a sorry state of affairs !
  I see a period of real decline for the Party no matter who is elected leader next

• Geoffrey Payne 16th Oct '07 - 10:07pm

  Ming has made it perfectly clear in the interview he gave today that he was NOT forced out of his leadership role by any of his Parliamentary colleagues.
  There are no grounds for finger pointing and I do not see what good it can do.
  Findamentally if you believe in Liberal values, then naturally you will want to recruit new members.

• Big Mak 16th Oct '07 - 10:07pm

  Totallylibdem you are obviously totallyanutjob!

  Teather maybe but Clegg against Kennedy, I think not!

  Get a grip and get your facts right!!

• Hywel Morgan 16th Oct '07 - 10:11pm

  “Ming has made it perfectly clear in the interview he gave today that he was NOT forced out of his leadership role by any of his Parliamentary colleagues.”

  What was it Mandy Rice-Davies said? 🙂

• Geoffrey Payne 17th Oct '07 - 7:59am

  Hywel 13, how dare you question the integrity of Ming Campbell and bring dishonour to the party.
  You need to learn some discipline.