Review into lessons from Mayor of London candidate selection

Understandably, a lot of members have been in touch about the issues over the London Mayor selection:

For the selection itself, this is proceeding with the remaining candidate, Luisa Porritt, and re-open nominations. This is the normal selection procedure if there is only one candidate for a post.

Without pre-judging the outcome of any of the processes that are ongoing, it’s clear there will be lessons to learn from all this. We need also to learn those lessons quickly enough to inform other selection coming up, such as Parliamentary selections when they restart in this Parliament.

Hence the news emailed out to activists in London by Ben Sims earlier today:

Dear Colleagues,

Several of you have written to me this week regarding the need to improve our approval and selection procedures.

As you will know, these involve an interaction of responsibilities and powers at regional, English Party and Federal Party levels.

On Monday therefore, I wrote to the Party President and the English Party Chair to recommend that a review is held to consider what lessons need to be learned and how processes can be improved.

I am pleased to say that they have asked Alison Suttie (Baroness Suttie) to undertake this review and report back to the Joint Candidates Sub-Committee (JCSC). She is the newly appointed chair of the JCSC and so will come to these issues fresh, but will also then be in a good position to help ensure the review’s findings are implemented.

I am reassured by this step and I hope that, together, we can improve the party’s processes for the better.

Please feel free to share this statement with any party members you feel appropriate.

Regards,

Ben Sims
London Region Chair

UPDATE: Luisa Porritt has been selected as the new Lib Dem candidate.

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