Tag Archives: internal elections

Today the counts get under way for the federal internal elections.

Online voting ended at 2pm yesterday but the voting period was dominated by the changes to the diversity quotas announced the day before polling started on October 28th.

On that day, presidential candidate Prue Bray wrote that she was so angry she could barely type.

It is far from clear what the law is exactly at this point, but even if we are not compliant with it, the party should have to be dragged kicking and screaming to do this! If we give up without a fight, not only will we be letting trans and non-binary people down and violating one of the core values of the party, namely, our opposition to discrimination of any kind – we will also do ourselves immense damage. We will lose the trust of many of our LGBTQ+ members and voters and their allies. Some may choose to quit the party altogether. The stupidity of the way that this has been done, without any explanation to those involved, without any priming, without any expression of regret..! I am not sure whether I feel furious – or heartbroken.

Her fellow candidate Josh Babarinde said shortly thereafter that he stood with trans an non binary Lib Dems.

What has happened in the last 24 hours represents the mere tip of the iceberg of the kind of thing trans and non-binary people face when going about life day-to-day, never mind when putting their heads above the parapet to stand in elections to represent us.

We’ve got to do more to support our trans and non-binary candidates, and ensure they feel safe and valued making contributions to public life. I’ve already had discussions with trans and non binary members about what this practically needs to look like, and I’m fired up to continue these discussions and drive action accordingly, irrespective of the Presidential election.

Since then, there has been an extraordinary and brilliant display of joint working between Josh, Prue and the official diversity organisations within the party, LGBT+ Lib Dems, Lib Dem Women, Lib Dem Campaign for Racial Equality and the Lib Dem Disability Association. They met the KC who had provided the party with the legal advice which had kicked this all off on Friday and issued a detailed statement on Monday which we reported here.

At the same time, Lucas North, a candidate in the elections, challenged the Returning Officer’s decision at a Federal Appeals Panel hearing on Monday. The decision was published yesterday and found in Lucas’s favour. The 2 page decision is published in full below.

The Federal Returning Officer David Crowther announced his resignation this norning:

Following the decision by FAP I don’t believe my position as FRO is any longer tenable and so I have resigned with immediate effect.

I’d like to put on record my thanks to Rachel Minshull and Mike Dixon for their support and endless hard work that made the volunteer role at all possible.

David was in an impossible position. As a volunteer, going against the party’s legal advice would have been extremely risky. We should be grateful to him for his service in this role.

There will have to be a review of what happened because there is much to learn from this. It should be carried out in a spirit of transparency and humility and we should make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.

How we deal with the quotas going forward will need to be addressed too, but the willingness we have seen for all the key players to work together over the past few weeks is an extremely good sign.