Lib Dems set to win Parliamentary by-election (yes, really)

100% turnout expected, alternative vote being used and a Liberal Democrat set to win…

Yes, it’s the House of Lords election to elect a new Liberal Democrat hereditary peer to have voting rights following the sad death of Lord Avebury:

I suppose that, pretty much by definition, a by-election to replace an elected hereditary peer in the House of Lords is a dynastic affair….

But as what may be the world’s smallest electorate gathers to replace the late Lord Avebury as an elected hereditary Liberal Democrat peer, a clash of Liberal dynasties looms.

Three current Lib Dem hereditaries are entitled to vote: Lord Addington, the descendent of a Conservative MP from the 1880s; the Earl of Glasgow, the descendent of one of the Scottish Commissioners who negotiated the 1703 Union of the kingdoms of Scotland and England; and the Earl of Oxford and Asquith, who is directly descended from the Liberal Prime Minister H H Asquith…

I understand the main contenders for those three votes are John Francis Russell, 7th Earl Russell, the son of Lords icon Conrad Russell, grandson of Bertrand Russell and great-great-grandson of Lord John Russell … [who] has been a Lib Dem councillor in Lewisham and ran for the London Assembly.

Or there’s Viscount Thurso – John Thurso – who was defeated in his Caithness and Sutherland seat last May, in the SNP landslide; he’s a descendent of the wartime Liberal leader, Archie Sinclair, who served in Churchill’s wartime coalition. [BBC]

The winner will be announced on 19 April.