Wouldn’t it be Lorely?

Hats off to The House Magazine for the best pun of the Liberal Democrat Deputy Leadership contest, a three-way race between frontrunner Lorely Burt, outsider Gordon Birtwistle and the recently strongly showing Malcolm Bruce, backed by those who think Nick Clegg pays too much attention to young, inexperienced staffers.

Here is some of what The House Magazine has to say about Lorely Burt:

[She] is happy to talk about the “very chauvinistic environment” in the Commons.

“It is tough, you can start asking a question or making a speech and if the opposition party consider that you are going to say something which is critical of them, you may find a wall of noise will hit you.

“They will use whatever off-putting tactics they can. It can be very tough.

“Whenever a new leader comes in they always say ‘this Punch and Judy politics, I am not going to be like that’, and they always are.

“The Liberal Democrats tend to sit there in mainly quiet annoyance at the behaviour, though we are capable of shouting a little bit occasionally.”…

“I wasn’t that interested in politics until my husband proposed to me – he proposed to me before he told me he wanted to go into politics which I thought was a pretty mean trick!” she explains.

“I found that he was able to make a difference in our local community. When he got elected it was an exhilarating experience. Then I decided I would have a go. I picked the next-door ward because I didn’t want to go in on his coat tails.

“Once you have won an election, when you have walked into a count and had the humbling experience of seeing your name on the ballot paper and people actually put a cross next to your name, there is nothing like that feeling.”