{"id":20,"date":"2006-01-07T23:46:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-07T23:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/?p=20"},"modified":"2011-07-07T00:58:09","modified_gmt":"2011-07-06T23:58:09","slug":"are-we-heading-for-mings-coronation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/?p=20","title":{"rendered":"Are we heading for Ming’s Coronation?"},"content":{"rendered":"

So Charles Kennedy has gone, although he may well be back on the front bench in the future.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the Lib Dems need a new Leader (we are not leaderless at the moment as Menzies Campbell is Acting Leader)<\/p>\n

As I write potential candidates Mark Oaten & Nick Clegg are both backing Ming, who has already declared his intention to stand.<\/p>\n

We could be heading for a coronation but if someone else throws their hat into the ring, it will interesting to see what Oaten & Clegg do. The only reasons for MPs allying themselves with a candidate is:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. They want a quick move to a new leader and think the candidate will be unopposed – a leadership election can take up to 10 weeks so would end sometime in March 2006;<\/li>\n
  2. They don’t have enough MPs to get themselves nominated;<\/li>\n
  3. The don’t want to be Leader anyway.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In my opinion Oaten & Clegg fall into Category 1. If the election is contested then that becomes irrelevant. And they won’t have to worry about splitting the vote. The AV<\/a> voting system used (a single-winner version of STV<\/a>) means that if they don’t get enough votes to be among the leading contenders, then the other preferences of their voters will be counted (this is not a very good way of putting it but for more detail see the Wikipedia article<\/a>) . It’s a far more elegant and quicker method than the repeated ballots the Tories use to allow their MPs to whittle down their leadership contenders<\/p>\n

    Personally I hope for either a coronation of Ming or a completely open contest in which all the major players are on the ballot paper. I think Ming vs. a couple of outsiders will just distract from the normal campaigning activities of the Lib Dems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    So Charles Kennedy has gone, although he may well be back on the front bench in the future. Meanwhile the Lib Dems need a new Leader (we are not leaderless at the moment as Menzies Campbell is Acting Leader) As I write potential candidates Mark Oaten & Nick Clegg are both backing Ming, who has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lib-dem-party"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6dbnw-k","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":357,"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}