A topic of much debate in the party, the question of whether or not there should be Liberal Democrat candidates in this autumn’s Police and Crime Commissioner elections was also the subject of a piece on The Westminster Hour on Sunday:
* Mark Pack is Party President and is the editor of Liberal Democrat Newswire.
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14 Comments
We exist to fight/win elections and elect Liberal Democrats, so yes we should fight these elections and indeed in Gloucestershire that is our current intention.
Yes
Not in all cases – it depends on the area.
I would say that Gloucestershire is likely to be the sort of area where there is a strong argument to have a Lib Dem candidate standing. In contrast, in my own area of Merseyside, I would hope that a good Independent stands who we can actively support.
I heard a report on Radio 4 saying that we wouldn’t be contesting these elections, ‘a reminder of the 1950s, where the Liberals didn’t contest many constituencies and had six MPs’. Do we really want to help this message, given that we’ve spent the fifty years since then saying ‘Liberal Democrats can win anywhere’?
@Simon – that supposes a good independent will stand. I am more pessimistic. What if you’re offered an effective choice between Sid Bonkers of the Castrate The Paedos Alliance and a slightly less authoritarian Labour hack who’ll add it to their portfolio of well-paying portfolios?
Well if there is anyone with time on their hands in November, they could always come to spend some time in the Lake District, it’s very nice at that time of the year and there are plenty of picturesque villages we could find some reason for you to visit.
I always though that we are here to delivery Liberal Democrat principles and ideas, and in order to achieve that objective, we need to win elections.
Anyone want to argue?
Foregone Conclusion: Yup, that’s the very Radio 4 report embedded into the post 🙂
Aaargh… yes, you’re right Mark. I didn’t listen to it for very long so I didn’t realise it was the Westminster Hour.
@Ian Stewart – hoorah! Cumbria is one of the places we could possibly, maybe win (what about Cornwall and Devon as well?)
One of the inescapable problems is cost. The last I heard there was stil doubt as to whether a freepost facility for one leaflet would be provided. This would be an enormous boost in getting our message across without breaking the bank.
Anyone aware of the latest situation on this?
Yes we should.
Regrettably the timescale & lack of support from HQ probably means we aren’t, which is going to get us hammered for it at the next local elections.
Surely it is the job of local parties to put Lib Dem candidates up for election to public office and support them. I understand the Federal Policy Committee deciding not to make central funds available for these elections but in my view if local parties can put up the deposit and a willing candidate they should go for it. The county co-ordinating committees should prove their worth in this situation. In practice, it comes down to finding the money (deposit is £5k I understand) and finding candidates. Once we have candidates they will get air time. A leaflet would be nice too, but the air time is valuable in itself. Someone must argue the liberal case. Remember all those neural networks out there. If liberal ideas are not expressed they will not be remembered.
My position is that party political campaigning is appropriate for membership of general purpose representative assemblies but not for special purpose single positions. I am not therefore in support of candidates with a direct party political label being put forward for Police Commissioner elections. I am not in support of such positions in the first place. Our position should be that constitutional power should always be ultimately in the hands of representative assemblies, no absolute power should be in the hands of single individuals. We should have had the guts to have made loud and clear our opposition to directly elected police commissioners in the first place.
Yes, of course. These commissioners are tasked with ensuring a force addresses the concerns of the population it serves, and so are political animals par excellence. And identifying and meeting the concerns of a population is what Libdems do best.
Yes we should, and I believe that some regions are going ahead regardless of what FedEx ruled. That said – if we’re honest with ourselves, it would be very difficult to mount proper election campaigns in all the police force regions.
These are going to be unusual elections for all parties. I suspect there would be many independent and non-standard candidates and of course it will be hard for all candidates to cover the entire police area within a tight turnaround election period.
There are 37 police forces in England – I don’t think anyone would seriously suggest we could afford to put up official candidates in all of them.
Does this question really matter?
I imagine most Chief Constables are busy working out in which cupboard they will store these useless powerless narcissists who they will largely ignore and dare to say ‘boo’.