Voting opens today for the Liberal Democrat Leadership Election!

You might get your ballot by either email or post and it might take some time on the 30th or 31st to be sent, as delivery is being staggered through the day. Postal deliveries may take longer, especially if you're overseas.

If you haven't had a ballot by 10am on Friday 31st July, please feel free to drop elections@libdems.org.uk an email. Votes have to be cast by 1pm on Wednesday 26th August 2020.

Let's be honest with ourselves - we're in a tough spot. Our average polling figure currently stands at 8%, a far cry from the late teens or early 20s we previously enjoyed as recently as last year.

I won Oxford West & Abingdon from the ground up. Nobody knows the potential of Liberal Democrat activists like I do.

Postal Votes

Postal votes have gone to print on the 27th July 2020. The initial run was around 5,000 voters. These will be sent to Royal Mail on the 29th July 2020.

We expect paper ballots to land between the 30th July and the 2nd August in the UK. We expect this to take up to the 14th August for non-UK postal ballots.

In our Democracy the Prime Minister and Government are accountable to Parliament, not the other way round, and yet Boris Johnson has been systematically unpicking the vital checks and balances which moderate his powers. Without these, it is a slippery slope towards an elective dictatorship.

Boris Johnson's attempt to prorogue Parliament was ruled 'unlawful'.

Welcome to the Weekly Whip. Your one-stop shop for Lib Dem Parliamentary updates, covering the week that was and the week to come.

For up to date information from the Lib Dem Whips Office, follow us on Twitter: @LibDemWhips

Weekly Whip w/c 20th July

Monday 20^th July

The final week of Parliament before the summer recess kicked off with the Foreign Secretary coming to the House to give a Ministerial Statement on China. After the imposition of a new security law in Hong Kong, the U-turn decision to ban Huawei from 5G infrastructure, and the serious concerns of human rights abuses in Xinjang, the China-UK relationship is under strain to put it lightly.

A complaint has been made by an individual about Ed Davey's 2020 campaign's use of data gathered in his 2019 leadership campaign for direct marketing.

The party has taken legal advice and received representations from the campaign.

The party's advice concludes that a technical breach has occurred in relation to specific consents. We have advised the campaign of the issues, and have required the campaign to cease using the affected data now and to gain new consents before using it again.

The UK has suffered a number of tragic terrorist attacks in recent weeks and months. The first duty of government is to protect people from this kind of violence, and Liberal Democrats will always work to ensure that our security services have the tools and resources they need to do their jobs.

This Bill would massively expand the Home Secretary's power to impose Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures.

This watershed report confirms an alarming truth: this Conservative Government has failed to take the Russian threat to our democracy seriously, even despite the clear evidence they interfered to help Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016.

The PM must nannounce a wide-ranging investigation of potential Russian interference in our democracy

We're putting the party back on track so we can achieve the sort of successes in future that we all so desperately want, and that our country needs.

Problems with the current way of doing things make it harder for us to win elections and to give members a real say in what happens. This was one of the major conclusions from the Dorothy Thornhill election review, which called for major improvements in how the party runs its own affairs.

The Federal Conference Committee met via Zoom call on Saturday, 11 July for the agenda selection for our first virtual conference. The meeting was a lengthy one, which was in part due to the large selection of varied motions we received, but also to give us breaks from staring at computer screens for a number of hours.