Tag Archives: mid bedfordshire by-election

The Voice

15 September 2023 – today’s press release

By The Voice | Fri 15th September 2023 - 10:30 pm

Ed Davey to make fifth visit to Mid-Bedfordshire

Tomorrow (Saturday 16th September), Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey makes his fifth visit to Mid-Bedfordshire, where he will speak to voters in rural villages.

The Liberal Democrats have become the challenger to the Conservative party in this rural Blue Wall constituency which consists of almost 50 villages. The Liberal Democrats opened their second office in the constituency this week.

Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said:

It is time for change and lifelong Conservative voters are turning to the Liberal Democrats to send this government a message. Rural communities in Bedfordshire are fed up with

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Caron Lindsay

Peter Kyle knows fine Labour can’t win in Mid Beds

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 13th September 2023 - 10:55 am

Labour’s new Shadow Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology showed that yesterday on the News Agents that he knows absolutely fine that Labour can’t win Mid Bedfordshire.

He made the bizarre claim, on the News Agents podcast that:

“If our candidate was gay, they’d be doing a family values campaign.”

He said that the we were running a “deeply personal” campaign against the Labour candidate in the by-election.

Labour can’t win there, but they can stop us. Is that really their aim?

Our response was:

People in Mid Bedfordshire are disappointed that Labour have chosen a London councillor as a candidate to represent their rural towns and villages. After Nadine Dorries, people want a local MP, not someone who has been parachuted in.

The Labour candidate resigned as a councillor on Waltham Forest Council last week, having been a Cabinet member there until 3 months ago.

Layla Moran took to Twitter to condemn Kyle’s comments:

Disappointing from @peterkyle. Lib Dems are proud to have brought in equal marriage ten years ago almost to the day and are allies of the whole LGBT+ community. To suggest we would weaponise equality issues is a utterly against our values.

And Tim Farron had news direct from the doorsteps in Mid Bedfordshire:

I was in Mid Beds today to support @EmmaMidBeds. On the doorstep, Labour voters were volunteering to me that they were going to switch to vote for Emma this time because she can beat the Tories and Labour clearly can’t. I’m even more convinced now that we can do this.

Of course my take from Mid Beds is partisan, but it’s based on solid evidence. 1) Labour voters are deciding for themselves to vote tactically for us. 2) Disillusioned Conservatives and others in this rural seat are keen to vote for Emma, but would never vote Labour.

The Lib Dem by election campaign team know what they’re doing. It’s by far the smarter, bigger and more engaging campaign. 4) Labour won’t win but they probably won’t lose their deposit and they could stop us winning. 5) Lib Dem activists need to go there en masse!

North Shropshire by-election winner Helen Morgan sent an email to party members:

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Mary Reid

**Breaking news** And still they come

By Mary Reid | Thu 7th September 2023 - 9:54 am

Another Conservative MP has resigned this morning.  Chris Pincher, MP for Tamworth, was suspended some time ago for groping two men, and he has just lost his appeal against suspension. He had previously said that he would step down at the next General Election but he now says he is resigning immediately.

Assuming he is not doing a Dorries, we could be looking at a double by-election on 19th October, which has now, at last, been set as the date for the Mid Bedfordshire contest.

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Paul Walter

Helping Emma and team in Mid Beds

By Paul Walter | Tue 5th September 2023 - 11:02 am

Stephen (left) and François at Flitwick by-election HQ this morning

I’ve helped at the odd by-election (!) but normally I don’t see the candidate during brief visits to the HQ to pick up bundles of Focii.

At Mid Beds this week, I have had a double candidate “I Spy” score. As we were watching “Rookie” on Sunday evening, Emma Holland-Lindsay actually phoned me on our landline phone (which these days is a bit like the Carlsberg complaints phone).

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Caron Lindsay

Nadine finally quits – how you can help Lib Dem Emma Holland-Lindsay win Mid Beds

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 27th August 2023 - 10:21 am

Nadine Dorries first announced her intention to resign her parliamentary seat “with immediate effect” on 9th June. And then she decides to actually do it 79 days later while I’m out celebrating my 35th wedding anniversary, returning to the scene of the crime for an absolutely delicious meal and some even lovelier cocktails.

So this means that the formal starting gun will likely be fired on the by-election campaign to replace her when Parliament resumes on 4th September. However, the Lib Dem campaign to get our brilliant candidate Emma Holland-Lindsay elected has been going on since the day after Nadine made her original announcement. Within hours, campaigners were gathering and swapping leaflets in supermarket car parks and the like.

If, as expected, the by-election takes place on 5th October, the publication of Nadine Dorries book about the downfall of Boris Johnson on 28 September, and any serialisation before, is bound to grab some headlines.

Ed Davey was questioned on whether the Lib Dems were the challengers on the For the Many Live podcast with Iain Dale and Jacqui Smith in Edinburgh:

He said he was feeling good about the prospect of a Mid Beds by-election as Labour party members there had told them they were voting for us. He said he wasn’t sure that we were going to win, but we were definitely the challengers. There was no way, he said, that people in the predominantly rural constituency were going to vote Labour to get the Tories out. He accused Nadine Dorries of an abuse of Parliament for her behaviour.

Last night, Ed said:

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Mary Reid

Update on Nadine Dorries

By Mary Reid | Fri 25th August 2023 - 1:47 pm

Yesterday I reported comments made by Daisy Cooper and Ed Davey about Nadine Dorries’ reluctance to carry out her promise to stand down from Parliament “with immediate effect” (Nadine Dorries should do something).

It seems that our MPs are now planning to table a Bill as soon as Parliament returns on 4th September to suspend Nadine Dorries for 10 days if she doesn’t appear in Parliament by 14th September.

If the motion is passed, and a suspension results, then this would trigger a recall petition in the Constituency and allow her constituents to force a by-election.

Daisy Copper tells us:

For months Nadine Dorries has treated the people of Mid Bedfordshire with contempt and taken them for granted.

As thousands of people struggle to get a GP appointment and face steep hikes to their mortgages, Nadine Dorries continues to be missing in action. What’s worse is that the Conservatives just don’t seem to care that they’re letting people down.

We need an end to this sorry saga, once and for all. Nadine Dorries must resign, if not then this Government must do the right thing and force her to. Every day that Rishi Sunak sits on his hands the people across Mid Bedfordshire are being failed.

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Mary Reid

Nadine Dorries should do something

By Mary Reid | Thu 24th August 2023 - 9:10 am

Our party’s calls for Nadine Dorries to do something – anything – have been getting more strident.

To recap, on Friday 9th June she said she was resigning from Parliament, with immediate effect, mainly in a huff because her promised peerage in Johnson’s Resignation Honours had been blocked. But then she didn’t – resign, that is. Instead she said that she was waiting for an explanation of why her appointment was blocked.

In the meantime there are claims that she has been absent both from the House and from her constituency of Mid Bedfordshire. Dorries herself claimed yesterday that she is ‘working daily’, but the use of quote marks in the media suggest otherwise.

On Monday Daisy Cooper said:

Nadine Dorries’s actions are a gross insult to the people of Mid-Bedfordshire. Why on earth should their taxpayers’ money fund an MP who hasn’t worked in months? If Nadine Dorries had a shred of integrity left, she would stand down now and give local people a chance to elect a new MP who will actually do the job.

It is disgraceful that she continues to have the Conservative Party whip. Clearly Rishi Sunak thinks Nadine Dorries’s actions are still worthy of being a Conservative MP.

Local people are fed up with being taken for granted by this out of touch Conservative party.

The rhetoric was ramped up yesterday, when Ed Davey visited Flitwick, in the constituency and he referred to her as a “dosser”.

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Mark Pack

Mark Pack’s monthly report to members

By Mark Pack | Thu 17th August 2023 - 10:47 am

Hello, Mid Bedfordshire

We don’t yet know for sure about when a Mid Bedfordshire by-election will take place after Nadine Dorries redefined “immediately” with her promise to step down straight away turning into a longer-running saga. But there is an active Lib Dem campaign up and running for Emma Holland-Lindsay, with some lovely letter boxes to admire.

Please do help if you can, in person or remotely, as Sarah Dykes’s stunning victory in Somerton and Frome shows just what we can achieve when we pull together behind a by-election campaign. A huge thank you to everyone  who contributed to that victory, a great burst of national media coverage and creating an abundance of Sarahs in the Lib Dem Parliamentary party.

What we stand for

One thing we do know the date of for sure is our autumn federal conference coming up in Bournemouth in September. The agenda and policy papers have now been published, and registration is open for both in-person and online attendance.

The agenda includes our pre-manifesto document, For A Fair Deal. This is both an up-to-date summary of our overall policies across all the main areas, and also has in its second chapter our overall story about the sort of society we want and how to get there. Well worth a read whether you’re coming to conference or not.

I look forward to meeting many of you there or in Mid Bedfordshire.

The importance of residents’ surveys

I’ve just been reading an advance copy of a fascinating new book coming out later this year about our party, and this nugget of data leapt out at me:

“In 2010, in nearly two-thirds of Liberal Democrat target seats a substantial amount of effort was put into running resident surveys during the pre-election period. This figure dropped to just a quarter of target seats in 2019.”

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The Voice

Emma Holland-Lindsay selected to fight the Mid Bedfordshire by-election

By The Voice | Mon 19th June 2023 - 3:25 pm

After a three-cornered contest, Emma Holland-Lindsay has been selected to be the Liberal Democrat candidate in the (presumed) upcoming Parliamentary by-election in Mid Bedfordshire. Emma was elected to Central Bedfordshire Council last month, coming top of the poll in Leighton Linslade South ward. Professionally, she is a member of the senior leadership team at a nationwide women’s charity and has previously worked for national disability charities.

Following the result of the contest to select our candidate, Emma Holland-Lindsay said:

It is an honour to have been selected as the Liberal Democrat candidate for my local area, and I am determined to be

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