Another PPC selection came to fruition last night. Robin Meltzer was chosen as the Liberal Democrats’ parliamentary candidate for Richmond Park, North Kingston and New Malden. He said on his website:
I am thrilled to have been selected as the new Liberal Democrat Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Richmond Park, North Kingston and New Malden. A huge thank you to the members across Kingston and Richmond who supported me and to the many volunteers who worked on my selection campaign.
The first thing he did this morning was to head to Eastleigh where Chair of the General Election campaign Paddy Ashdown was there to congratulate him.
Robin lives in Kew and tutors children in English and English Literature. He has won the Party’s Belinda Eyre-Brook award for his campaigning for the party.
He also received an award this year from the cross-party Clean Air for London campaign to recognise his years of campaigning to combat air pollution in the city.
Robin is also here on Twitter. Once Eastleigh is over, he’ll take the fight to the Tories and Zac Goldsmith in Richmond Park.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
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5 Comments
Congratulations to Richmond – a great choice.
Congratulations to Robin. It was a shame Zac Goldsmith stood in Richmond instead of finding a seat with a MP more deserving of being removed than Susan Kramer. Generally though the Lib Dems are in an utter shambles on candidate selections. For a party that preaches the benefits of early selection of candidates, to have selected a half dozen or so out of 600 is absurd. Cleggs mess up on the boundary changes hasn’t helped but as usual, he leaves others to deal with the consequences of his mistakes.
It is also a huge mistake for the party to keep selecting ‘the best candidate’ by which is often meant the most experienced campaigner with most free time, instead of taking a much wider view of what best candidate means – which would include the beyond urgent need to get women and ethnic minority candidates selected for winnable seats.
It is a mistake to think that and candidate on their own can make the difference without substantial support from the party nationally. So candidate selection needs to take into account the needs of the party nationally
which doesn’t include another rather unexceptional, white male middle class MP.
I’m a little suprised at Caractus. Firstly, I don’t see how Clegg messed up over boundary changes – he pulled a blinder on that one. Stopping something that would have undoubtedly lost us a fair number of seats and also laying down a marker with the Tories to make sure we are not trampled over in coalitition discussions.
Secondly, lets be frank only the seats we have sitting MPs and target seats does it matter to select early. And we seem to be well on with with selecting in these seats.
Finally while I do lament the fact we have so few women MPs and no BME MPs, the selections I’ve seen recently do seem to trying to address this, but that doesn’t mean we never select a white male for winnable seats. There is also a simple fact that people who work hard and campaign properly are moire likely to be successful, which is why our parliamentary party is filled with campaigners.
I see that Paddy’s handshake has lost none of its power. Robin is being very brave!
Is Robin OK? I’m trying to ask him about local issues on Twitter but he seems to be offline…