ALDE Party delegation - squeezing fifteen into six is just as difficult as it looks...

Following our not so glorious General Election result (think Charge of the Light Brigade but without the same level of survivors...), the Party has had to do a lot of thinking about what next and how. This, naturally, is way above my pay grade as a Local Party Treasurer. However, it has had effects that most members wouldn't see, and just as many probably won't care much about. As a member of the International Relations Committee though, I am suddenly confronted with one of them.

You see, our right to delegates on the ALDE Party Council and to its Congress are linked to the number of votes obtained at the most recent General Election, and the loss of votes has had a deleterious effect on our numbers, down from fifteen to six on Council, and from sixty-two to thirty-two at Congress. Luckily, we don't elect our Congress delegation. Unfortunately, we do directly elect our Council delegation, or at least, eight members of it. Our dilemma might be beginning to dawn on some readers...

In 2014, we elected eight members of the Council delegation through a vote of Federal Conference delegates and, most generously, enough of you voted for me to enable me to serve a third term. To complicate matters, none of them was the Chair of the International Relations Committee, who represents the Federal Executive on our delegation, and who really ought to be there.

The other seven places are nominated by the three State Parties, Federal Policy Committee and the Liberal Democrat European Group (LDEG) - somewhat helpfully, the State Parties all failed to nominate anyone.

And so, a resolution of this problem is required and, in a fit of enthusiasm, I volunteered to draw up a paper for International Relations Committee to discuss and, hopefully, adopt.

This is proving somewhat harder than I expected. Balancing gender, ethnicity (and yes, I fully intend to do that) and the State Parties is a challenge, but how do you address the historic role of Federal Policy Committee, or include the Party President, or ensure that the delegations aren't London-centric?

So, with the next meeting of the International Relations Committee approaching fast, I can see how my afternoon is going to look...