A site housekeeping notice follows…

Liberal Democrat Voice is an independent website, and therefore is not bound by the rules governing the party’s selections.

However, we are happy voluntarily to operate our editorial policy in the spirit of selection rules adopted by the party.

Where those rules ban endorsements generally any comments that would infringe these rules will be withdrawn (eg, a comment saying “I’ll be voting for Herbie Asquith”, or “Don’t vote for Bill Gladstone; he supports chopping down trees”).

However, where endorsements are permited, either generally or outside of the formal manifestoes, we will allow such comments as long as they do not break our comment moderation policy in any other respect.

We will accept guest posts from candidates, except if the rules explicitly ban such publicity for candidates, or where the number of candidates for a particular contest may make it impractical for us fairly to offer such a facility to everyone.

News coverage of the selection contests on this site will be balanced and fair to all candidates.

We will accept guest posts from people who are continuing in their normal activities even if they are a candidate for a selection at the time.

In the event that any member of the Lib Dem Voice team is a candidate in a selection, any decision about how to implement our policy in a specific case will be made by other members of the team instead.

Finally, please bear in mind that even if we are happy to run certain content, it is the responsibility of candidates and their supporters to ensure that their actions do not break any rule and to check with the Returning Officer where appropriate.

This statement of Lib Dem Voice’s comments policy on internal party election supercedes this post.