Tag Archives: laura gordon

Paul Walter

Getting back on the horse – and saying thank you

By Paul Walter | Fri 31st January 2020 - 10:45 am

Laura Gordon shows her fighting spirit with this tweet and begs the question – have you delivered your “thank you” Focus yet?

https://twitter.com/LibDemLaura/status/1222916748372062208

PS. As of this morning, 85.8% say Laura has got back on the horse!

Posted in Campaign Corner | Also tagged | 1 Comment
Laura Gordon

Rebellions are built in Hope – the launch of the Northern Liberal Network

By Laura Gordon | Fri 3rd January 2020 - 1:00 pm

New year is a time for new projects. And with a parliament likely to last four years, we have time to devote to thinking about where we want the party to be by 2024 – and how we get there. So before Christmas, Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) and I met up for a pub lunch in the Peak District. We picked Hope, partly because it’s halfway between our homes, and partly because… well… we could use some hope.

While this election was disappointing across the board, the result masks significant regional variation. We did relatively well in London and the south east, despite heartbreaking near-misses in Wimbledon and Carshalton and Wallington. But elsewhere in the country our performance was weaker – even in areas, like Sheffield Hallam, that voted remain.

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged and | 26 Comments
Paul Walter

Sam Gyimah MP joins party at thrilling conference rally

By Paul Walter | Sat 14th September 2019 - 9:08 pm

Embed from Getty Images
I have been staggering along to more conference rallies than I care to remember. But tonight’s conference opener was the most thrilling rally I have been to.

Hard on the heels of Sal’s fantastic presidential swan song, Tim Farron was on fire as he started it.

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Posted in Conference | Also tagged , , and | 7 Comments
Paul Walter

Sheffield diary – the campaigning importance of Fry’s Chocolate Cream four packs

By Paul Walter | Thu 5th September 2019 - 10:30 am

Laura Gordon in the Sheffield campaign HQ

Yesterday morning I caught the bus out to the HQ. After a most welcome cuppa, I packed up my rucksack and went off with a full load of leaflets and targeted envelopes.

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Posted in Parliamentary by-elections | Also tagged | 2 Comments
The Voice

Former Labour Sheffield Hallam MP arrested on suspicion of fraud – BBC

By The Voice | Fri 23rd August 2019 - 11:54 pm

The BBC reports:

MP Jared O’Mara has been arrested on suspicion of fraud, according to multiple sources.

The independent MP for Sheffield Hallam was arrested at the same time as his chief of staff Gareth Arnold, the BBC’s Next Episode Podcast found.

Electronic equipment was confiscated in the South Yorkshire Police inquiry, the BBC also understands.

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 11 Comments
Caron Lindsay

You’ll want to get to Sheffield this weekend….

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 8th August 2019 - 8:55 am

Absolutely nobody would grudge Jane Dodds, our newly elected MP for Brecon and Radnorshire a weekend off.

After all, she has just been through a gruelling by-election campaign.

When I was down there three weeks ago, she had a very strong sense that people were coming to help her and she needed to return that favour.

Nobody expected her to be doing it quite so soon, though.

Since the Labour MP for Sheffield Hallam said he was stepping down in September, Laura has been stepping up her campaign activity.

https://twitter.com/LibDemLaura/status/1157925080300736512?s=20

Jane is repaying the huge effort Sheffield put in to her win. Laura went to Brecon several times as did local party chair John Dryden to whom I am eternally grateful for the lift back from the Lib Dem Pint in Brecon. I wouldn’t have been able to go otherwise.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 4 Comments

#GirlsSupportingGirls

By Ruth McElroy | Tue 6th August 2019 - 11:55 am

When I first took charge of Scottish Liberal Democrat Women earlier this year, my mission was simple: I was going to save the women.

In Scotland, we are fortunate to have the brilliant MPs Jo Swinson and Christine Jardine, but the proportion of women elected at all levels simply isn’t good enough. We are running an almighty campaign to get the brilliant Beatrice Wishart in the Scottish Parliamentary by-election in Shetland later this month but even when we get her elected, she will be the only one of 5 Lib Dem MSPs who is a woman. Luckily, our elected men couldn’t be better allies – I have personally witnessed Willie Rennie putting in real effort to push through new rules on all women shortlists, and encouraging many women to consider their futures with the party.

As to how to save the women, this was the subject of many a conversation amongst my network of Lib Dem Ladies, a WhatsApp group which has become somewhat infamous at Scottish conferences full of women who inspire me every day. There are a few more ideas in the pipeline but the one we’ve been working hard on for the last few months is #GirlsSupportingGirls.

We know that there are many, many women in our party who would make brilliant MPs, MSPs and local councillors, and we want to make sure that they achieve their goals. That is why for the last few months, we’ve been gathering SLDW members and sending them to support female candidates of all sorts. We started with the brilliant Jenny Marr, PPC for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk, and have been travelling across the UK since, even road tripping to Brecon and Radnorshire to help out our brand new MP Jane Dodds. 

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 4 Comments
Mark Valladares

27-28 July 2019 – the weekend’s press release

By Mark Valladares | Sun 28th July 2019 - 11:50 pm

The people of Sheffield Hallam can send a powerful message for change

Responding to the news that Jared O’Mara will resign as the MP for Sheffield Hallam, Liberal Democrat PPC for Sheffield Hallam Laura Gordon said:

By resigning Jared is doing the right thing – both for himself and his constituents.

People in Sheffield will now get their chance to have their say, both on Boris Johnson’s dangerous Conservative Government and on Jeremy Corbyn’s failure to provide effective opposition at a time of national crisis.

This by-election can send a powerful message for change and the Lib Dems ready for the challenge.

Posted in News | Also tagged | 1 Comment
Caron Lindsay

Sheffield is a lovely part of the world, and Laura Gordon would be an excellent Lib Dem MP

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 27th July 2019 - 4:40 pm

The Star is reporting that Sheiffield Hallam MP Jared O’Mara is to resign his seat after the parliamentary recess:

The MP, aged 37, said he was ‘not well and in the process of receiving medical help’ and would resign following the MPs’ summer recess, which is due to end on Tuesday, September 3.

Mr O’Mara: “Please let everyone be assured that I will be tendering my resignation via the official Parliamentary process as soon as term restarts.

“I am not in any fit state to continue and nor would that be appropriate if I was. I reiterate my apology to my constituents, the people of Sheffield and the people of the UK as whole.”

This news comes at the end of an extraordinary week in which his chief of staff resigned via O’Mara’s Twitter account, accusing him of “vile, inexcusable contempt” for the voters. This was followed by allegations that he had sexually harassed a young woman on his staff.

He issued a statement yesterday saying that he was struggling with mental health issues and said that he would be making a further statement in a few weeks. However, the Times gives details today of messages sent to the young woman concerned. He also sent some pretty horrible messages to his staff about Lib Dem candidate Laura Gordon.

It’s that Times report that seems to have prompted his statement of intent to resign.

A by-election in Hallam is definitely winnable for us. And Laura is a brilliant candidate. I can definitely feel a trip to the city coming on. However, almost everybody expects there to be a General Election in the Autumn, so it’s possible that either a by-election gets disrupted by the dissolution of Parliament or the by-election doesn’t happen at all. It’ll be Labour who get to decide when to move the writ.

I suspect they may wait a bit. The prospect, as Kevin Lang put it on Twitter, of every Lib Dem in the country descending on Hallam in a by-election will be something that Labour wants to avoid.

Labour have been all over the place on a General Election this week. The spectacle of them having a rally outside Parliament calling for a General Election while, inside the building, refusing to support a vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson’s horrific government would have been amusing if the mess we were in wasn’t so serious.

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 40 Comments
The Voice

Vince: Lib Dems will be running Sheffield by 2023

By The Voice | Sat 26th May 2018 - 11:10 am

Vince Cable went to Sheffield this week and predicted that the party would again be running Sheffield’s Council within 5 years – and that we would win back Sheffield Hallam.

From The Star:

There

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 27 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Laura Gordon steps up her campaign for Sheffield Hallam

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 13th December 2017 - 10:25 am

It’s only a few weeks since Laura Gordon was selected as Lib Dem Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for the marginal seat of Sheffield Hallam but already she is making her mark.

In June, Nick Clegg was defeated by the controversial Jared O’Mara who has failed to do the job he was elected to do.

Laura is effectively having to behave like an MP to fill the vacuum. In a wide-rangingi interview with the Sheffield Star, she talked about what she is doing to help local people:

She is helping people with casework, ‘taking up issues’ for Hallam constituents with councillors and the Lib Dem parliamentary team. “I feel this is something we can usefully do,” Laura says.

At the moment Jared O’Mara is not holding surgeries, so somebody needs to be looking at those casework issues. “He hasn’t voted since the 18th of October, it’s on the public record. He’s the only MP elected in 2017 who hasn’t made his maiden speech yet. It kind of speaks for itself, really.

She also talked about the guy Jared beat and what a loss he is to Parliament:

A lot of people have commented on that as I’ve been going around talking to people. Lots of people have said ‘I was helped by Nick’, often with things that we might think of as quite small, like getting a road fixed and campaigning on school buses or crossings. “He was very willing to get engaged on local issues, as well as doing all this work on the national level. I’ve got big shoes to fill but I’m going to do my best to fill them.

She and her husband settled in Sheffield five years ago:

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 8 Comments
NewsHound

So what was Vince Cable doing in Sheffield Hallam?

By NewsHound | Sun 26th November 2017 - 8:29 pm

Twitter was awash with rumours the other night that Jared O’Mara, the MP with the racist, misogynyist and homophobic internet past, was close to resigning.

That would create a by-election in the Sheffield Hallam seat where he beat Nick Clegg in June.

In what we are sure is an entirely unrelated development, Vince Cable went to Sheffield yesterday to campaign with the new Sheffield Hallam candidate, Laura Gordon.

Spot our Joe Otten in the background there.

Vince heard all about the trees that the Labour council is going to such desperate measures to destroy.

Laura tells us why she’s standing in this video:

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 8 Comments
The Voice

Laura Gordon selected as PPC for Sheffield Hallam

By The Voice | Sat 4th November 2017 - 10:10 pm

Nick Clegg’s successor as Lib Dem candidate in Sheffield Hallam has been chosen.

Laura Gordon won the selection contest last night.

The Star has more details.

Following her selection by Lib Dem party members on Friday, Ms Gordon said: “I am really honoured to be selected by the Liberal Democrats to be the candidate in Sheffield Hallam. “The Liberal Democrats have a long history in Sheffield Hallam

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 6 Comments
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