See Tim Farron’s leadership campaign magazine here

Tim Farron’s leadership campaign has been rather parsimonious with its money so far – both compared to Norman Lamb’s campaign and to previous contests, and especially when it comes to premises and staff.

Today shows in part why, because by saving in those areas the Farron campaign is able to afford a posted magazine to party members, landing on doormats just in time for weekend reading and the first ballot paper completions.

I was amused to see it quoted both myself and Stephen Tall, which presumably makes one of us the Eddie Izzard of the Liberal Democrats…

More substantively, note how Tim Farron talks up his – excellent – record in winning a Parliamentary seat. It’s a quirk of the campaign that Farron is getting more mileage over his record on this than Lamb is on his, even though when Farron took over as the candidate in Westmorland and Lonsdale the Lib Dems were only 9% behind in his seat; when Lamb took over as the candidate in North Norfolk, the party was 28% behind. One took on a marginal seat and won it, the other took on a no-hoper and won it.

The economy on staff and premises is possible thanks to the network of volunteer helpers the Farron campaign has put together, which in its own small way is a nice demonstration of how Farron can build capacity and teams – though of course it’s a demonstration his team isn’t too keen to boast about, commencing as it did well before the general election with planning starting in earnest before Christmas. Norman Lamb’s planning started in earnest later, though he too was doing things before the general election, with his campaign web address, for example, having been registered in March.

The latest tally on (ex)MP endorsements is 29 Lamb – 26 Farron.

Meanwhile, here is the latest campaign video from Norman Lamb:

Keep up with news on the Lib Dem leadership race

• Sign up for Liberal Democrat Newswire here, and
• Sign up for the Facebook event for the contest (where Norman Lamb and Tim Farron are regularly answering questions from members).