Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Why Lorely Burt lost the deputy leadership

Interviewed by the Huffington Post, Lorely Burt scoffs at the idea that she lost the Liberal Democrat deputy leadership election because her fellow MPs saw her as Nick Clegg's candidate.

But I wonder. As the Post explains, her defeat by Sir Malcolm Bruce was a bit of a mystery:
At the end of January Lib Dems chose veteran parliamentarian Sir Malcolm Bruce to replace Simon Hughes. The decision caught many observers off guard. The result was also not one Burt saw coming. 
"Yeah. I was surprised," she freely admits. ... "Malcolm came into the race quite late, so there was already an expectation that I was going to win even before he came in."
For a fuller version that the vote for Bruce was a vote against Clegg, see the article by Gareth Epps on Liberator's blog.
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2 comments:

  1. Bill le Breton20 February, 2014 19:00

    Could it simply be that a very small, highly experienced and fully informed electorate had no confidence in the capabilities of a candidate for the job in question, persuaded another of their number to stand and voted according to their judgement about who was best?

    It does call into question the leadership's judgement that they couldn't see this happening among a group of experienced politicians.

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  2. Unknown23 February, 2014 12:00

    She said on the day she announced her candidacy that she had 24 MPs. That's only 4 ore than are on the Government payroll. I suspect a little bit of complacency in the Burt camp.

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