Political

Jo Swinson elected new Liberal Democrat leader

Here’s the result of the contest to succeed Vince Cable as leader of the Liberal Democrats:

Jo Swinson 47,997 (63%)
Ed Davey 28,021 (37%)

Jo Swinson becomes the party’s first female leader and already 200 more people joined the party during her acceptance speech alone. You can do too.

Jo Swinson’s 63%, ahem, compares with the 60% in my election survey.

That results makes for a record number of members voting: 106,075 ballots were sent out and 76,429 votes cast, with a 72% turnout.

The turnout compares with 56% for the 2015 Farron-Lamb contest and 64% for the knife-edge Clegg-Huhne contest of 2007. Previous turnouts were 72% (2006), 62% (1999) and 72% (1988).

Addressing members at the declaration, Jo Swinson said:

When I joined the Liberal Democrats at 17, I never imagined that I would one day have the honour of leading our great party.

I want to pay tribute to Ed for giving us the robust but friendly contest our members deserve. Ed is a great friend and a superb politician, and will have a crucial role to play in our team.

I also want to thank Vince Cable for the leadership he showed in taking our clear stop Brexit message to voters, which led to our best ever set of local and European election results.

Tomorrow, Boris Johnson is likely to take the keys to Number 10 and set us on a path to a damaging no-deal Brexit. Stopping Boris, and stopping Brexit is my number one priority as leader.

That job starts with winning the Brecon & Radnorshire by-election to bring Jane Dodds to Parliament, cut Johnson’s wafer-thin majority and take us a step closer to stopping Brexit.

No surprise that Brexit has featured heavily in Jo Swinson’s first round of media coverage after her election:

9 responses to “Jo Swinson elected new Liberal Democrat leader”

  1. Fantastic to read an acceptance speech that combined passion with decency – so often the two don’t go together.

  2. It is both our strength and sometimes our weakness that Lib Dems tend to be decent people. But I have full confidence in Jo to stand-up firmly for our principles and against the divisive policies of Boris and the Brexit party. Their plans to just runaway from the EU are absolute madness. And lets not forget that Britain has other important problems like lack of affordable homes. lack of proper support for people living in poverty.

  3. The case for a robust, reforming and responsible liberal government remains. As the voice of progressives who believe in our four nations, we as LibDems have a heavy responsibility. Jo instead of BoJo …

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