Tag Archives: buckingham

The Voice

Lib Dem candidate won’t stand against the Speaker after all

By The Voice | Wed 26th April 2017 - 4:40 pm

Yesterday the Bucks Herald reported:

Buckingham Constituency (Liberal Democrats) will be fighting the General Election on June 8th. This is the first time one of the three major parties has contested the seat since 2005, four years before John Bercow MP became the Speaker.

Their prospective parliamentary candidate is Sarah Lowes.

Sarah Lowes is a life-long Lib Dem voter who joined the party in May 2015, after the then leader Nick Clegg’s resignation speech inspired her to become an activist rather than an armchair supporter.

However, this has now been superseded by events. Today, Sarah Lowes took the decision to stand down in accordance with the convention that the main political parties do not oppose the Speaker.

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 45 Comments
Helen Duffett

BNP announce Parliamentary Candidate for Buckingham

By Helen Duffett | Tue 9th March 2010 - 12:58 pm

The BNP has announced its Buckingham candidate for the 2010 General Election, adding another candidate to a slate which already includes UKIP, John Stevens (former Lib Dem member and before that, Conservative MEP,) Patrick Phillips (“conservatively minded” Independent candidate) and Geoff Howard (former Conservative and UKIP member).

With the three main parties refraining from standing against the Speaker, it will be interesting to see how the vote is split by the minor parties and independents, all of whom have or have had right-wing leanings.

The Liberal Democrats have chosen a spokesperson rather than a candidate.

From the Buckingham Advertiser:

The British National

…

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Posted in General Election and News | Also tagged , , , , , and | 9 Comments
Helen Duffett

How much of a battle does Bercow face in Buckingham?

By Helen Duffett | Fri 26th February 2010 - 9:10 am

Further developments in Buckingham, John Bercow MP’s constituency, where convention dictates that other parties don’t put up a candidate against the incumbent Speaker:

UKIP is looking forward to a large donation, whilst claiming that fundraising on Bercow’s behalf breaches Parliamentary rules. Meanwhile, Buckingham Liberal Democrats announce their plan for the General Election.

The Times reports that a UKIP member from Buckingham has complained to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards after receiving a letter from fundraising team “The Friends of Speaker Bercow”:

has written to the commissioner expressing concern that The Friends of Speaker Bercow may be breaching parliamentary rules by

…

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Posted in General Election and News | Also tagged , , and | 23 Comments
Philip Young

Why shouldn’t Buckingham Liberal Democrats join in?

By Philip Young | Tue 22nd December 2009 - 10:45 am

The accepted wisdom is that it is “protocol” not to oppose the Speaker. Yet there are plenty of examples that this is simply not true – Selwyn Lloyd, for one, was opposed, and there are other examples (and we are not talking pre-war or the mists of time).

What is going on in Buckingham is extraordinary. The Speaker is unpopular with his local party – not just a large block of Conservative MPs in Parliament – and his wife has shot through the Labour Party hoops and jumped other hurdles to go on the list of approved …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 26 Comments
Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP

Lord Pearson as a Tory party whip and Griffin v. Maloney

By Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP | Wed 9th December 2009 - 4:13 pm

UKIP have got themselves into a right pickle recently, poor things! It emerged last week that their new leader Lord Pearson a number of months ago made a somewhat controversial offer to the Conservative party. Pearson allegedly (The Times, 30 November, UKIP’s planned deal with Tories causes outrage in anti-Europe party) approached Lord Strathclyde, the leader of the Tories in the House of Lords, with an offer to disband the party and withdraw all UKIP candidates if the Tories agreed to hold a referendum on EU membership. Lord Strathclyde himself has confirmed that the meeting with Pearson, who is in fact a former Tory, took place.

Although Nigel Farage has since changed the story slightly saying that the offer only included withdrawing all candidates, this is still a pretty hefty political gamble.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , , , , , and | 15 Comments
Stephen Tall

Standing against the Speaker: never mind the politics, what about the voters?

By Stephen Tall | Sat 5th September 2009 - 2:15 pm

There’s been plenty of interesting Lib Dem internet chatter asking whether – now Ukip’s soon-to-be-ex-leader Nigel Farage is breaching normal convention and standing against the incumbent Speaker, Tory MP John Bercow, in Buckingham – the Lib Dems should follow suit.

Opinion is divided. Some say we absolutely shouldn’t – here, for instance, is Stephen Glenn:

… while the ‘convention’ for not standing against a sitting speaker is not as set in stone as some people may have you believe, it is none the less a precedent symbolising the apolitical nature of the role. Indeed it seems to be one, that even if contested, the constituents seem to back up as not one speaker seeking election since 1969 has polled less than 50% of the vote.

And here’s the Wit and Wisdom blog:

Liberal Democrats wanting to be taken seriously should give the Speaker a clear run at the next election as is the convention.

Meanwhile Mark Littlewood at Liberal Vision is more open to the idea that the Lib Dems should stand a candidate to oppose Speaker Bercow and Mr Farage:

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 11 Comments
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