Tag Archives: liberal democrat leadership contest 2020

Leadership election ballots hit doormats and inboxes

By Paul Walter | Fri 31st July 2020 - 10:21 am

Leadership email and paper ballots have been going out over the last 24 hours.

Party members have until 1pm on Wednesday 26th August to place “1” or “2” or “blank” against the names of (listed alphabetically) Ed Davey and Layla Moran, or to abstain.

I received my email this morning from Alan Masters, the returning officer. The email included a unique number which I should use to place my vote.

It included the following links for those who are yet to decide:

Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Leave a comment

Leaderless for another year – no thank you

By Paul Hodgkinson | Sun 5th April 2020 - 8:55 am

As we all stay safe in our homes, we have time to think and reflect. Too much time for some I know but at least we can take a step back and see the wood for the trees.

First of all, I want to say that postponing the leadership election was the right thing to do due to the extraordinary and overwhelming nature of the crisis we’re facing as a country and as a planet. The focus has to be on saving lives and supporting our communities.

But postponing it for so long – another 14 months – puts us in a very difficult position as a party. We’ve just come out of a bruising general election. The Tories have surged in popularity due to the crisis and being seen to have ‘delivered’ Brexit (even though they actually haven’t yet and probably won’t now on the promised timescales) whilst Labour has been muted.

This will start to change this weekend with Kier Starmer taking over as Labour leader. He will get some traction just by being new – and lets face it he’s bound to be more effective than his predecessor. So where does that leave us? It leaves us with no democratically elected leader until the summer of 2021.

We have the double hatted interim leadership – both good and competent people by the way – but not the single figure with the backing and authority of the party membership. As a party we are what our leader is. Paddy, Charles, Ming, Nick, Tim, Vince, Jo – they set the tone and image of what we were all about.