Local teacher Lee Howgate wins Liberal Democrat nomination for Torbay

Paignton-based schoolteacher and former Foreign Office diplomat Lee Howgate has been selected as the Liberal Democrat Prospective Parliamentary Candidate (PPC) for Torbay, the former constituency of Adrian Sanders.

Winning out over three other shortlisted candidates, he said:

I am delighted to have been chosen from a strong and talented field. It is fantastic that so many members backed my vision on how we need to change Torbay for the better. We need to make clear to Torbay that we are the party of social justice, and the only party to offer a clear way forward on Brexit.

Lee Howgate is an Assistant Headteacher at Saltash Community School and previously served as a diplomat, building up particular on Russia and the EU. He was the author of the winning vision for Britain in 2030 in the Liberal Democrat essay competition run by Your Liberal Britain.

Talking about his plans for how the Liberal Democrats can win the Parliamentary seat once again, Lee Howgate said,

We have got to start talking about Brexit. This is the key to recruiting and retaining our members…

[We must] campaign relentlessly on social justice, out-Labouring the Labour party. We are the great party of equal opportunity, education, electoral reform and the Welfare State. Let’s act like it.

[We also need to] reform the way we as a local party do business, so that light and air are let in to discussions on policy and strategy. Being a member should mean something. So let’s allow all our members to attend the Executive and the Campaigns Committee, and have a vote on what we do. We are democrats. It’s what we should do…

[We need to] create a vision of Torbay for the next decade, developing an ambitious plan to build a better future. We need to make Torbay a place people truly want to be- for tourism, business and entertainment. That means putting Torbay on the cultural map, and exploiting our literary heritage. It means diversifying our local economy, giving investors and visitors good reasons to bring their money to the bay. And it would be our plan, with input from all our members – a shared vision we can all get behind.

There’s a full list of Liberal Democrat Parliamentary candidate selections so far here.

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