Lib Dem leadership contest is over, Tim Farron won:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... rty-leaderTim Farron, the MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, has been named the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, winning the vote among party members by 56.5% to 43.5%.
Farron, a former party president who was one of the eight Lib Dems to retain their seats in May’s general election, beat the MP for North Norfolk, Norman Lamb, by 4,500 votes out of a total of 34,000.
The contest was triggered by the resignation of Nick Clegg, who quit the day after the party lost 48 of its 56 MPs, leaving it the fourth party in the Commons.
Voting closed at 2pm on Wednesday and the result was announced on Twitter, through the Lib Dem press office account, on Thursday, putting to an end 10 weeks of busy campaigning.
Minutes after the result was announced, Farron tweeted his followers to thank them for their support.
Lamb said the leadership election had energised the party and that he gave his full backing to Farron. He said: “Tim Farron will be a passionate leader of our party, championing social justice and leading from the front in our campaign to rebuild the liberal voice in our country.”
A key figure on the left of the party, Farron was always the favourite to win the contest, polling 58% of the vote in a survey of party members conducted on Monday.
Speaking to an audience of around 500 party members after his victory, Farron described the Lib Dem defeat at the general election as “overwhelming, desperate, heartbreaking.” He said the party’s election campaign had focused too much on what the party wasn’t instead of what it was.
“So let me be crystal clear what the Liberal Democrats are for: we are the party that sees the best in people not the worst,” said Farron to deafening applause.
“We are the party that believes that the role of government is to help us to be the best that we can be, no matter who we are or what our background.”
Despite being widely respected for his campaigning on mental health, Lamb, who served as Clegg’s parliamentary private secretary and the care minister under the coalition government, struggled to shake off the image of being a continuity candidate.
Lamb won the support of many of the party’s most senior figures, including former leaders Menzies Campbell and Paddy Ashdown and the founding member of the Social Democratic party, Shirley Williams, whereas the bulk of Farron’s support came more from the grassroots of the party.
Though Farron claims to be passionately proud of the Lib Dems’ record in government, he voted against some of the coalition’s most unpopular policies, including the bedroom tax and, crucially, tuition fees – something he admits will have helped his campaign.
Farron now faces the daunting challenge of rebuilding the party, which saw its worst result since it was founded with the merger of the Liberal party and the SDP in 1988.
His approach will be to start at the very bottom. “Pick a ward and win it … There’s a small foothill, scale it,” he told the Guardian before the vote, arguing that the party will need to make big gains at local elections if it is going to stand a chance of winning back some of those 48 lost seats in 2020.
The Lib Dems under Farron will not try to be outspoken on every issue, but will instead champion issues that the two more populist parties are not willing to tackle. They will campaign against the right to buy being extended to Housing Association tenants and be unequivocal about the tragedy of the Mediterranean migrant crisis while extolling the benefits of immigration.
“If we cheese off 70% of the electorate, but 30% embrace us, we’ll have that,” he told the Guardian in an interview during the campaign.
Despite calls from Danny Alexander, the former Lib Dem chief secretary to the Treasury, for the party not to vacate the centre ground and become “a sort of soggy Syriza in sandals”, Farron has been clear that he is not a centrist politician.
“I think centrism is pointless. It’s uninspiring. I’m not a centrist,” he said at a recent hustings in Bristol, though he refused to say where he saw himself on the political spectrum, insisting politics was more complicated than left and right.
Clegg welcomed Farron’s victory, describing him as “a remarkable campaigner” and a man of “the utmost integrity and conviction” who would always have his support.
The former Lib Dem leader said in a statement: “He is a natural communicator with a rare ability to inspire people and rally them to our cause. He knows how to win and I have no doubt he can pick the party up and get us fighting again. It has been a pleasure to serve alongside Tim in parliament and a privilege to consider him a friend.”
The election – which saw the candidates take part in 25 hustings and more than 100 campaign events – was superficially civil, with both candidates professing their admiration for one another. But last month, Lamb suspended two members of his campaign team when they were found to have privately polled party members about what Lamb’s aides considered to be Farron’s illiberal voting record on abortion and LGBT rights.
Farron is a committed Christian and was among nine Lib Dem MPs who abstained at a third reading of the marriage (same-sex couples) bill, a move he attributes to concerns about aspects of the bill relating to “protecting people’s right to conscience”.
When asked to name policy areas where the two candidates differed, Lamb would cite Farron’s opposition to assisted dying, which Lamb said was fundamental to his own liberalism.
Farron told the Guardian during the campaign that he did not think he would be receiving the same level of scrutiny of his religious beliefs if he were Jewish or Muslim, and that people who were concerned his faith would affect his ability to lead a liberal party should “look more carefully into what liberalism really is”.
Labour leadership contest ongoing, Jeremy Corbyn (a rebel MP very much on the left of the party) has an unexpected lead.
BBC article on candidates (irrelevant bits cut out):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32654262The candidates: Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Jeremy Corbyn and Liz Kendall
Key dates: Ballot papers will be sent out on 14 August; voting can take place by post or online. They must be returned by 10 September. The result is on 12 September
Who can vote? All party members, registered supporters and affiliated supporters - including those joining via a union
The voting system? The Alternative Vote system is being used so voters are asked to rank candidates in order of preference
How does it work? If no candidate gets 50% of all votes cast, the candidate in fourth place is eliminated. Their second preference votes are then redistributed among the remaining three. If there is still no winner, the third place candidate is eliminated with their preferences redistributed. It is then a head-to-head between the last two candidates
Andy Burnham
The Labour MP for Leigh since 2001, Andy Burnham has plenty of government experience and is the current bookmakers' favourite.
Mr Burnham served as health secretary under Gordon Brown and previously as culture secretary and chief secretary to the Treasury.
He stood for the leadership in 2010 but lost out to Ed Miliband, going on to hold the shadow health brief under Mr Miliband's leadership. He is said to have strong trade union support.
Declaring his intention to stand, he said Labour must support the "aspirations of everyone".
Mr Burnham says he'll widen Labour's appeal by taking the party out of the "Westminster bubble", with a vision to helping "everyone get on in life".
He has also pledged to take a tougher line on opposition to the government's welfare reforms, following a split within the party over its stance not to oppose the welfare bill.
Mr Burnham is married with three children. Before he entered politics he worked for a newspaper and a publishing company.
Yvette Cooper
Another former chief secretary to the Treasury - as well as a work and pensions minister under Gordon Brown - Yvette Cooper has been shadow home secretary for the past four years.
A strong Commons performer, she has given Home Secretary Theresa May a hard time over matters including passport delays, border controls and extremism.
She did not stand to succeed Mr Brown in 2010 - her husband Ed Balls did.
Announcing her bid this time around, she said: "Our promise of hope wasn't strong enough to drown out the Tory and UKIP voices of fear. That's what we need to change."
She says she has the "strength, experience and progressive ideas" that Labour needs to win again, promising a "stronger" economy and "fairer, less divided society".
She says she wants to combat child poverty, has pledged to campaign against government plans to limit future child tax credit to two children and to bring about a childcare and digital "revolution".
Ms Cooper is married to former Labour shadow chancellor Ed Balls, and the couple have three children. She worked as a journalist prior to her political career.
Jeremy Corbyn
The veteran left-wing MP for Islington North entered the contest to get an "anti-austerity" voice into the debate on Labour's future.
The 66-year-old told his local newspaper, the Islington Gazette, he had decided to stand in response to an "overwhelming" desire among Labour members for a "broader" range of candidates.
After a last-minute scramble for nominations, he made it on to the ballot paper just before the deadline thanks to a number of MPs who did not want him to be leader "lending" him their nominations "to broaden the debate".
Mr Corbyn, who is promising to protect public services and increase taxes on the wealthy, was seen as a rank outsider, but support for his candidacy has risen significantly - with one poll putting him in the lead.
A vice-chair of CND and a columnist for the Morning Star, Mr Corbyn has frequently been at odds with his party over the past 20 years, opposing the Iraq war and other foreign interventions and backing public ownership of the banks.
He also wants to scrap Britain's nuclear weapons programme, and tuition fees in England.
Mr Corbyn has been married three times and has three children with his second wife. He used to be a trade union organiser and a Haringey councillor, in London.
Liz Kendall
Shadow health minister Liz Kendall was the first Labour MP to say they wanted a crack at the party's top job, saying a "fundamentally new approach" was needed.
First elected to Parliament in 2010 as MP for Leicester West and appointed to the shadow front bench the same year, Ms Kendall is seen as a Blairite contender.
She is a former special adviser to Harriet Harman and then Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt who has argued for reform of public services.
Ms Kendall has acknowledged she is the "outside candidate" but says the party needs "a fresh start".
She says she'll regain the public's trust in Labour on the economy, promising sound public finances and protection of the poor and vulnerable. Her pitch stresses the need to make the party electable, saying that the party won't be able to help people if it's in opposition.
Ms Kendall is not married and does not have children. She worked for two think-tanks: the Institute for Public Policy Research and the King's Fund, and was also a political adviser to Harriet Harman in the 1990s.
Labour's election rules
MPs wishing to stand as leader and deputy leader have to be nominated by 15% of their colleagues in the Parliamentary Labour Party to be eligible to stand.
As Labour now has 232 MPs, this means prospective candidates had to get at least 34 signatures. That means the maximum size of any field is six contenders.
Under rules agreed last year, all Labour Party members, registered supporters and affiliated supporters - including union members - will be allowed a maximum of one vote each on a one member, one vote system.
When the election is held, they will be asked to rank candidates in order of preference.
If no candidate gets 50% of all votes cast, the votes will be added up and the candidate with the fewest votes eliminated. Their 2nd preference votes will then be redistributed until one candidate has 50% of all votes cast.
