Tag Archives: candidate selection rules

So much for the changes to candidate selection?

By Mark Valladares | Fri 30th May 2025 - 12:45 pm

Those of you who have read the Party President’s latest missive will have discovered that, last Thursday evening, English Council was invited to ratify the changes needed to enact motion F10 “Constitutional Amendment: Implementing the Lessons of the General Election Review”, as required by the last four lines of the motion:

Conference further notes that implementing these changes will require agreement by the State Parties under Article 2.10(c) and encourages them to give their assent as soon as practical this year.

It didn’t exactly go to plan though as, whilst English Council delegates voted in favour of granting assent, the two-thirds majority required was not reached. Accordingly, assent has not come from the English Party, and the formal work of the proposed new Joint Candidates Sub-Committee is thus in abeyance of sorts.

The Chair of the English Party, Caroline Pidgeon, is quoted as follows:

Since last night’s meeting I have been contacted by many members, wanting clarity about the next steps. Given the clearly expressed desire for change, this issue is not going to disappear. I want to reassure you that as the Chair of the Liberal Democrats in England, I will be speaking with others about an appropriate way forward to find a suitable and acceptable solution that allows for the clear views of the wider membership and English Council to be respected, but that also addresses the outstanding concerns raised at English Council. This will take a few weeks to consider and reflect.

Posted in Op-eds and Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged english party | 5 Comments

So, you’re thinking about finding a PPC?…

By Mark Valladares | Mon 10th July 2023 - 3:02 pm

One of the quirks of recent General Elections is that, for a lot of constituencies, the process of selecting a candidate has been somewhat truncated. But time is getting on, and the new boundaries are out, so it’s probably time to make a start…

If you haven’t got a candidate in place already, you probably aren’t a target seat, but you almost certainly have some goals that you wish to achieve, and the right PPC can help you to achieve them. So, your first step is to agree to start the process at a meeting of the Local Party’s Executive Committee. …

Posted in Party policy and internal matters and Selection news | 3 Comments

Vince is right: we must revisit our rules

By Kishan Devani | Thu 13th September 2018 - 3:30 pm

Vince is most definitely right: our party’s 12-month rule is arbitrary and should be removed. The randomness of such a timescale before a member can stand as a candidate for MP, mayor or the GLA is exposed by the fact that Scotland’s rule is only nine months. It also makes new members feel unwelcome, their commitment automatically doubted.

I hope no-one would doubt my loyalty or my passion for our party, which is my natural home. Since joining the Lib Dems in December I have campaigned and spoken at innumerable associations across the length and breadth of London, helped out in St Albans and have been asked to speak and assist in Cheltenham, Leeds and Stratford-upon-Avon. I have probably met more Lib Dems than many lifelong members.

Someone like myself, who has campaigned at grassroot level for months for the London local elections, who stood for council within six months of joining the party, should also have the opportunity to stand as an MP, London mayor or the GLA.

Yet the 12-month rule says, in effect, that I do not know the party well enough to do so. If that is the case, why has the party appointed me as Vice-President of the Liberal Democrats Campaign for Racial Equality or elected me Vice-Chairman of Lib Dems in Business? Or Mike German sought me out to be the Treasurer’s envoy?

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged party policy | 20 Comments

Building a more accessible candidate selection process – the campaign phase

By Mark Valladares | Fri 6th November 2015 - 12:00 pm

View image | gettyimages.com

Three weeks ago, Zack Polanski offered us a perspective on the way we, as Liberal Democrats, select candidates, focusing in particular on the barriers to participation that campaign spending limits create. And, whilst I am not Mark Pack, I am prompted to offer a different perspective on the problem by Mark Platt’s suggestion of a ‘Packian response’.

First, some context. The 1997 European Parliamentary selection was the first where, almost regardless of where you were, there was a serious prospect of a Liberal Democrat being elected. In South East England alone, seventy-two members applied to be on the shortlist. In the absence of restrictions on spending, certain candidates were seen to have attempted to buy a place high up on the list. As a result, it was strongly suggested that spending caps be introduced, a concept that the English Party adopted readily. As Anthony Fairclough noted, it was for local shortlisting committees to determine a limit appropriate to their circumstances, with an overriding limit of £1 per head – one letter to a member would take up a chunk of that.

Posted in News | Also tagged featured | 8 Comments

Choosing a better candidate – some ideas to make it happen

By Tim Farron and Mark Pack | Wed 26th June 2013 - 3:21 pm

Liberal Democrats are well used to arguing for changes in how our public elections are run, because we know the rules you use for a contest have a big impact on how desirable its outcomes are. That isn’t just about the voting system (important though that is!) but also a question of who gets the vote, how much influence those with money to spare can wield and so on.

It is just the same with the rules for our own …

Posted in Party policy and internal matters | 22 Comments

Positive action for women on Westminster shortlists

By NewsHound | Fri 7th December 2012 - 1:52 pm

The English Candidates Committee (ECC) has decided to retain positive action measures to address the under-representation of women in the Parliamentary Party.

Clause 24 in the Westminster Rules for Selection of Parliamentary Candidates stipulates that where the ECC has decided to adopt positive action arrangements which affect a shortlist, those arrangements shall be observed by the Returning Officer and shortlisting committee as if they were contained in this Rule.

The provision is that:

In strategic seats and aspiring strategic seats (those that have ‘opted up’ to the full selection process):

a shortlist of three candidates must contain a minimum of one woman

a shortlist of

…

Posted in News, Party policy and internal matters and Selection news | Also tagged diversity and english party | 35 Comments

News on adverts for candidate selections

By Mark Valladares | Fri 2nd November 2012 - 3:52 pm

With the impending demise of Liberal Democrat News, the question of what to do about advertisements for Parliamentary and other candidate selections suddenly becomes important. Happily, the English Candidates Committee is on the case. Returning officers around the country have received an e-mail from Great George Street as follows;

Dear Returning Officer,

As you may be aware, Lib Dem News is changing to be a monthly magazine from 16 November onwards and the old libdems4parliament site no longer functions effectively. As such, in future, selection adverts will go direct to the Candidates Office and adverts will be hosted for free online on …

Posted in News and Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged party bureaucracy | 8 Comments

Gender quotas get legal backing in Ireland

By Mark Pack | Tue 24th July 2012 - 8:50 am

Interesting news from Ireland on the long-running question of male dominance of elected Parliamentary posts:

GENDER QUOTAS are set to become law after the Electoral Amendment (Political Funding) Bill 2011 passed all stages in the Dáil yesterday.

The legislation, which has yet to be signed by the President, will halve State funding to parties unless 30 per cent of their candidates at the next general election are women. This figure will rise to 40 per cent at subsequent general elections…

Posted in Election law and News | Also tagged gender balance and republic of ireland | 5 Comments

Gender Equality and MPs – is our performance as bad as it looks?

By Mark Thompson | Tue 31st January 2012 - 11:38 am

I am very unhappy with the number of female Lib Dem MPs. 7 out of 57 is not good enough and we need to improve. The leadership programme which assists those from underrepresented groups to become candidates will hopefully help.

7/57 = 12.3%. So, less than an eighth of our MPs are women. The Conservatives have 48/307 = 15.6%, Labour 81/258 = 31.4%. Activists from the two other parties have pointed this out to me on numerous occasions. They are right to. It is embarrassing. We definitely need more female candidates. In 2010 we only had 134 (21.3%). The Conservatives had …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged gender balance | 32 Comments

A close escape – and now we should change our Euro-selection rules

By Mark Pack | Sun 29th January 2012 - 2:50 pm

This week the Liberal Democrats have had a close escape. Diana Wallis’s sudden resignation as an MEP highlight flaws in the party’s rules for picking a successor.

Those rules aren’t new, but many people (myself included) have not paid that much attention to them in the past. It was only the circumstances of a resignation surrounded by controversy which brought attention to their weaknesses. Weaknesses only side-stepped by the decision of Stewart Arnold not to seek to succeed Diana Wallis.

Most of the events of the last few days are specific to the Diana Wallis resignation – the fallout amongst …

Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged diana wallis | 30 Comments

Opinion: a need for equality? Yes, but short lists aren’t the way to achieve this

By Roisin Miller | Tue 10th January 2012 - 2:53 pm

As much debate about party funding and selection rumbles on, the issue of increasing diversity amongst MPs continues to hover in the background.

I would never deny that the under-representation of women or people from BME backgrounds needs to be addressed, however there is a much more pressing diversity issue, that of diversity of social class and occupational background.

Parliament is currently overrepresented by those who have been researchers, Special Advisors and lobbyists. To give some context to this statement: the House of Commons research library reported in 2010 that 14% of the current intake of MPs have worked previously in political …

Posted in News and Op-eds | Also tagged inequality | 9 Comments

European candidate selections: is that the time already?

By Mark Valladares | Tue 3rd January 2012 - 7:25 pm

News has reached your reporter that, in a radical break with tradition, the English Candidates Committee is likely to meet later this month to address key questions relating to the selection of European Parliamentary candidates for elections due in May 2014, where Liberal Democrats will be defending seats held in each of the nine English Regions (two in South East England) and in Scotland.

Radical, because the Committee usually only meets four times a year, with the first meeting at the Spring Federal Conference, and the newly elected Chairs …

Posted in News and Selection news | Also tagged european elections | 1 Comment

Opinion: Why the Diversity Motion caused a stir at Conference

By Ramis Cizer | Thu 30th September 2010 - 12:23 pm

I not a massive fan of the term “Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME)” and in an ideal political world it probably wouldn’t exist. But we don’t live in an ideal world and the term is required to designate certain segments of population in order to address inequalities – an uncontroversial statement in my opinion – so why does it cause such heated discussion? Too complex to answer here so I will leave it to someone else but I have some ideas on why the Diversity Motion caused a stir at the Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference.

Liberalism to me is a …

Posted in Conference and Op-eds | Also tagged diversity and equalities | 6 Comments

Critics take note – English candidate selection process is fair, not flawed

By Mark Valladares | Mon 20th November 2006 - 4:41 pm

Liberator 314 included a piece critical of English Candidates Committee and of the selection process generally. Sadly, but inevitably, the Collective are not alone in their criticism so, perhaps, we need to have an open debate on our processes, what they seek to achieve, how they work and what key failings need to be addressed in order to move things forward.

I’ve been involved in the selection processes of the party as a Returning Officer since 1989 and as a candidate assessor since 1995. In that time I’ve seen huge changes in the Selection Rules and the candidate approval processes, very few of which have simplified the processes to be followed. With that complexity comes frustration, and not just for those wanting to be candidates or wishing to adopt one.

Unexpectedly perhaps, I share some of those frustrations, as the system by which we select PPCs places a heavy burden on our Local Parties, especially the smaller, weaker ones. Our selection rules impose costs, both financial and human, and where the number of likely applicants is small, that cost is a disproportionate one. So how did we get into this mess?

Posted in Party policy and internal matters | 9 Comments

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Tag Archives: candidate selection rules

So much for the changes to candidate selection?

So, you’re thinking about finding a PPC?…

Vince is right: we must revisit our rules

Building a more accessible candidate selection process – the campaign phase

Choosing a better candidate – some ideas to make it happen

Positive action for women on Westminster shortlists

News on adverts for candidate selections

Gender quotas get legal backing in Ireland

Gender Equality and MPs – is our performance as bad as it looks?

A close escape – and now we should change our Euro-selection rules

Opinion: a need for equality? Yes, but short lists aren’t the way to achieve this

European candidate selections: is that the time already?

Opinion: Why the Diversity Motion caused a stir at Conference

Critics take note – English candidate selection process is fair, not flawed

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