Mark Pack

The choice of which Liberal Democrat Parliamentarians to feature in the party’s fundraising letters is usually a hard-headed choice of who is most popular and will bring in the most money, sprinkled with a dusting of covering internal political sensitivities. So it’s interesting to see who was selected to feature in the lastest fundraising letter from Party President, Ros Scott: Vince Cable, Simon Hughes, Lynne Featherstone and Nick Clegg.

All of them came out well in the most recent Lib Dem Voice survey of party members which suggests the evidence the party sees paints a similar to picture to that garnered by our surveys. Those surveys can only be taken by current party members, though within that it is a self-selecting set of people who take part rather than a random or quota survey and participants have tended to be more male and younger than the party membership overall. The recent sharp increase in the party’s membership during the election and since has seen the party’s average age drop, so the age – if not the gender – gap may be closing.