Least surprising news of Lib Dem leadership contest: it’s a two horse race

Nominations have closed and it’s official: the contest is between Jo Swinson and Edward Davey. No surprise last-minute candidature featuring an ex-Change UK MP or one of the other Liberal Democrat MPs.

No need, therefore, for Stephen and I to hurriedly re-record our latest podcast episode or for me to redo my graphs.

There are quite a few hustings meetings still to come, details of which can be found here: www.libdems.org.uk/hustings. Or you can watch the first hustings in full here and read my analysis here.

Meanwhile, in other party leadership news… there was a (very) distant showing for the Renew Party in the Peterborough by-election yesterday. Today, its leader – former Liberal Democrat Parliamentary candidate Annabel Mullin – has stood down as leader.

After leaving the Liberal Democrats, she had founded Advance. Advance then teamed up with another new party, Renew, before Annabel Mullin stood as a Change UK candidate at the European elections as part of a further deal.

The 2019 Lib Dem leadership election is being covered by me both in podcast form with Stephen Tall in Never Mind The Bar Charts (subscribe here) and in email newsletter form with Liberal Democrat Newswire (sign up here).