Voters at the London elections next May will be given three ballot papers each using a different voting system – let no-one claim that alternative systems to First Past The Post can’t work.
The pink ballot paper is for the Mayor of London, and voters select their first and second choice only.
The yellow ballot paper is for the London constituency Assembly member who is elected by First Past The Post. The constituencies are larger than the Westminster seats and are based on combinations of local authorities.
Finally the orange ballot paper is for the London-wide Assembly members who are taken from party top-up lists to provide a balanced Assembly. Voters simply vote for the list they prefer, and candidates are elected from the list starting at the top and working down, depending on the proportion of votes cast and the make-up of the constituency winners.
So far, all Lib Dem members of the London Assembly have gained their places via the list. The order of names on the list is crucial in determining who will be successful.
At the weekend, London Region announced that sixteen candidates had been shortlisted for the London-wide list.
London Lib Dem members will soon be receiving ballot papers or email instructions so they can express their preferences among the sixteen candidates – this will produce a final list of eleven candidates in order of popularity.
The sixteen shortlisted candidates are Dawn Barnes, Rob Blackie, Duwayne Brooks, Emily Davey, Merlene Emerson, Brian Haley, Adrian Hyyrylainen-Trett, Stephen Knight, Teena Lashmore, Ben Mathis, Annabel Mullin, Pauline Pearce, Caroline Pidgeon, Mark Platt, Zack Polanski and Marisha Ray.
There will be a hustings on Friday 4th September from 6.30pm, at Hamilton House, Mabledon Place, London, WC1H 9BD.
London Region has sent us this message:
London is clearly the most diverse part of our country but the costs and sacrifices for candidates from attending hustings, community events, and local party campaign days can deter some, or limit what others are able to do.
Long term supporter Dominic Mathon has launched an “Access fund” so that all our London candidates who get selected are able to play as full a role in the campaign as possible. The fund will be used to reimburse candidates for childcare costs, travel costs or lost hours at work for candidates on low incomes.
You can read more about the Access Fund here – please add your donation to help
Featured post image by Dave Pearce/davebass5
* 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.
Follow @LibDemVoice on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Anyone try the West Cliff Lift?
Dropping the 1p tax rise has political costs too
Matthew Sweet on conspiracy theorists and the media
A blob-chart way of dissecting Britain's prosperity failure
A matter of trust
New housing planned for Fishmore Road - Environment Agency wants more information
Michael's weekly ward surgeries today! #dundeewestend
Ewan Hoyle
James Baillie
Tom
Bob Hale
22 Comments
This is going to be a very hard Election for us, London is one of our weakest areas & this will come a year after our worst ever General Election defeat. It is not impossible that we could be reduced to a single Assembly member.
The first step is to get ourselves noticed after 6 years of invisibility to the voters. We may not be able to make that first step but we at least have to give ourselves a chance. That means that our Mayoral candidate & the top 2 or 3 on the Assembly List must take voters by surprise – they must not look & sound like The Liberal Democrats voters expect to see & hear.
First of all we should exclude our present assembly members, not because they have been bad at their jobs but because they look like Libdems & they would be overlooked.
Second, our Team must have something extra that will hook the Media, some sort of story beyond politics.
On both grounds I would put Duwayne Brooks top- he doesnt look like The “typical” Libdem & he has a back story. Luckily for us I also think he would make a good candidate but that isnt primary. We have had good candidates before & the voters ignored them.
For the others, Merlene Emerson or Teena Lashmore would make great seconds.
This is not the time to be reasonable or nice, we need to be ruthless & wild.
“This is not the time to be reasonable or nice, we need to be ruthless & wild.”
Fair point.
@ Paul Barker. I think this is an interesting proposal. As an ordinary, if rather inactive, Party member I have to say that the only name I recognise on this list, besides Caroline Pidgeon, is Duwayne Brooks. I don’t know how good a candidate he is in terms of his public speaking abilities, or his political thoughts, but in principle I think the idea of his being our lead candidate has a lot to be said for it. Like it or not in this sort of election image will play an important part, so at the risk of sounding like a PR consultant, let me list some things in his favour. Firstly he’s physically attractive; secondly he’s young enough to appeal to young voters yet old enough to reassure older voters who expect a degree of maturity; thirdly he’s black, which will make him stand out against the other main party candidates (even if Sadiq Khan wins the Labour nomination); and lastly, as Paul has indicated, his personal story, particularly with regard to his relationship with the police, will resonate with many young people.
The message from London Region includes —
“…. the costs and sacrifices for candidates from attending hustings, community events, and local party campaign days can deter some, or limit what others are able to do.”
Stop right there! Has it occurred to London Region or anyone involved in the campaign that the way in which we have fought these elections in recent years has not been very effective?
I remember years ago Susan Kramer saying how many miles she had walked down every “High Street” amd shopping parade across London in her bid for Mayor. The problem was that 99% of voters did not notice her doing it. The electoral impact was minimal.
Susan’s result was a bit better than the last two outings for election for London Mayor where (somebody correct me if I am wrong) we got 4% and four years later slightly less.
Perhaps “…candidates … attending hustings, community events, and local party campaign days” has mostly been a waste of time???
Perhaps we have been putting resources into the wrong things?
Maybe our candidates would be better off spending all their time sitting on the steps of the BBC drawing attention to their blatant bias?
My guess is that SKY and Ch4 News might enjoy reporting a permanent demonstration about the fact that for the last 7 years the daily regional news bulletins broadcast on BBC TV and Radio have acted as a promotional mouthpiece for the Conservative Boris Johnson who has had a revolving door between his office and the BBC recruitment office for “journalists” moving in both directions from one highly paid sinecure to another.
Forgive me for attempting to question the orthodoxy of London Mayoral and Assembly election campaigns by Lberal Democrats in the past but I suggest that wasting time, money and candidate energy parading around “hustings, community events, and local party campaign days” will achieve nothing better in 2016 than it has in previous years.
It is time for some new thinking and some radical changes.
I don’t agree with Paul Barker about the invisibility of current Assembly Members. Our local paper, in a LibDem black hole, regularly prints stories from Caroline Pidgeon and Stephen Knight.
Of the 16 above, I immediately recognise 9 and have actually talked to 7 of those.
@ Ian Sanderson What is the readership of local paers these days.? In a London wide election only coverage in the Evening Standard is important. Caroline Pidgeon only gets coverage because of her role in the Transport Committee, and there’s nothing distictly Liberal or exciting about what she has to say, worthy though it may be. Indeed her attitude to Über is essentially Luddite. The fact that Ian immediately recognises 9 of the candidates and has talked to 7 actually makes him totally unrepresentative of the London electorate.
@ John Tilley Absolutely right!
I have some experience of campaigning with several of our possible candidates. The idea of going ‘wild’ in our choices makes no sense, you have to look beyond the election and who would be an able Mayor or Assembly member. On my experience of contact with our potential candidates i would ask that you look at Dawn Barnes, she would be very able if elected and a great campaigner during the run up to next May 🙂
@ peter kemp. I had a look at Dawn Barnes’s website where she explains why I should support her as high on the LD candidate list, but all she talks about is housing, and very much at a local level. There’s nothing to suggest to me that her campaigning will be anything different to traditional local LD campaigns, which really don’t past muster in a London-wide, personality dominated election. I’ve asked her for an answer. It will be interesting to see what she comes back with.
I don’t know what etiquette is for candidates to get involved in these sorts of discussions – but I (naturally) feel that I fit a lot of the criteria discussed.
I’ve been around and campaigned in London that I have experience and a relatively stable, safe pair of hands. At the same time i’m young, passionate and most of all want to look for different and more effective ways of doing things. If you’re intrigued enough to give me some of your time – my website is at http://www.zackpolanski.co.uk
I realise a website alone isn’t enough to gain a highest preference vote but please have a look and I’m more than happy to chat to anyone who wants to call me/email me with their thoughts.
Thanks,
Zack Polanski
Following on from John Tilley’s legitimate criticisms, one thing we could try is having the same candidate for Mayor as tops our list of Assembly candidates. It would require rule changes but it worked very well for the Green Party in the past.
Phil Rimmer 18th Aug ’15 – 2:49pm Good idea.
@John Tilley
‘I remember years ago Susan Kramer saying how many miles she had walked down every “High Street” amd shopping parade across London in her bid for Mayor. The problem was that 99% of voters did not notice her doing it.’
But the security guards in the Liberty shopping centre in Romford noticed her, and asked her to leave.
Can I make a desperate appeal for the Mayoral shortlist to be re-opened – the situation now is that we are faced with a shortlist of one. Thats no-ones fault but surely there is still time to look at the shortlist again ?
@ Paul Baker And the Party should take up there suggestion that our mayoral candidate should be no 1 on the Assembly list. This happens elsewhere in Europe so why not here?
Lembit Opik would have made a terrible Mayor (though no worse than BJ), but at least the media would have noticed him.
People in sandals with white socks going “wild” – this I gotta see! 😉
I don’t know what you do in London but if someone influential is reading can they not do what was done in the SouthWest at the EU elections in 2014 when they didn’t put the names of all the candidates on the literature, only the ‘stars’?
It just looks underhand and in the specific case I’m thinking of, it made the competing Greens look more honest and open than us.
Don’t undermine the integrity of the process, even if the process is flawed.
Oh, for open list systems (or STV, of course).
@ Matt The London mayoral and Assembly elections are fundamentally different to the Euro elections. All the media attention is on the vote for Mayor, and most GLA members will get elected on the coattails of the candidates for Mayor. This is why we need a high profile mayoral campaign. Sure we have to put out something which refers to all the GLA candidates, and links them to the candidate for Mayor, but the campaign needs to resemble a US presidential campaign, not a mid term election.
When proportional elections were negotiated for the euro elections Alan Beith MP asked in the Commons for open list.
Jack Straw said he would go away and consult (presumably Tony Blair). The Tories were apoplectic that a government would even listen to a debate in parliament, although they were in opposition themselves at the time. They still have a lot to learn about what democracy means. So does Labour, Gordond Brown’s speech on Sunday was not about democracy, it was about power.
The Mayoral Candidate needs to be a lot more high profile than the current candidate. The Mayor debate will dominate the coverage in National news and in the Evening standard/metro when it comes to the assembly elections. Let’s be honest it would be a huge upset for Lib Dems to win and so we need someone who will make a lot of noise and be heard. This will only advantage the list candidates who are unlikely to get anything like as much press coverage and also get more coverage for issues we want discussed . I agree politics should be about issues and not personalities but that not how the media work and I’m sorry we have to play that game. The current candidate is far too anonymous in most Londoners eyes in comparison to Sadiq or Zac for example. I bet I don’t need to add a surname and you know who I’m talking about but that is not the same for our potential candidate
Confused – is Duwayne Brooks still on the assembly list but withdrawn from the mayoral list?