New leadership for London Liberal Democrats

I mentioned that we had a contested election for the position of Chair of the Regional Party, yet didn’t indicate what had actually happened. Most remiss of me, really…

There were two candidates, Denys Robinson from Greenwich, the current Chair of the Policy Committee, and Sandra Lawman from Lambeth, currently heading our fundraising efforts for the next two Regional election campaigns. Both of them are experienced campaigners, both have a lot to offer, but I had opted for Denys.

Chairing a large, and somewhat unwieldy committee requires a degree of steel, a sense of humour and endless patience, and for those reasons, Denys appeared to me to be the candidate I would most prefer to act as Regional Secretary to, and although I won’t be fulfilling that role next year, the criteria are fairly adjacent. So it was with a degree of pleasure that, following the ministrations of our Returning Officer, Dave Hodgson, it was announced that Denys had indeed been elected and will take up office on 1 January.

Given the rather quirky rules that dictate how the Regional Executive is formed, he will start his term without a Vice Chair, Treasurer, Secretary or Chairs for the Campaigns, Local Parties and Policy Committees. He will have a Regional Candidates Chair – Margaret Joachim – and a Regional Conference Chair – me – and ten Executive Members as follows;

Jeremy Ambache, Linda Chung, Pete Dollimore, Jill Fraser, Sandra Lawman, Dominic Mathon, Eliane Patton, Caroline Pidgeon, Balan Sisupalan and Brian Stone

What this means is that we are, for all intents and purposes, gender balanced, if you add in the new Regional President, Baroness Sally Hamwee. Life should be very interesting, especially if some of the female members are willing to fill the various Officer vacancies...