Vote for Layla Moran to be the next leader of the Liberal Democrats
Ballot papers for the Liberal Democrat leadership election will start dropping into members’ inboxes from 9am tomorrow.
As explained on Lib Dem Voice earlier, these are being sent in batches of around 4,500 per hour, so your email might not reach you until Friday morning. Postal ballots may take another couple of days to arrive.
When you do receive your ballot paper, please consider giving Layla Moran your first preference vote.
The Liberal Democrats are at a crossroads. We lost a considerable amount of support as a result of the coalition, and despite a resurgence thanks to our position on Brexit, that additional support translated to just four more seats in 2017 – and one fewer in December.
The choice facing our party now is very simple: either we continue with the legacy of coalition and post-coalition mediocracy, where we are currently averaging just 8% in the polls, or we look to the future and build a modern, energised party to campaign and win elections at every level.
Layla Moran is the only candidate who can draw a line under the past and rebuild the party from the ground up. She did it in Oxford West and Abingdon in 2017, when she built an organic campaign team to overturn a Tory majority of 9,582, and again in 2019, when she increased her majority tenfold and secured the largest share of the vote for the Liberal Democrats in the seat’s history.
Layla has a plan for rebuilding trust in our party across the country, in just the same way as she did in her own constituency. This includes listening to voters and delivering on the things which matter to them, building a refreshed progressive, liberal message with the collaboration of all members of our party, and providing tailored support and training to members across the country so that every activist is empowered with the skills they need to campaign effectively.
In last year’s leadership election, I struggled to decide between two candidates whose platforms were remarkably similar. This year, my mind was made up on 8 March, the day Layla announced she was standing to be our next leader.
Layla’s vision for the country is bold and radical, from introducing a Universal Basic Income to protect every citizen from poverty, to aiming for a carbon-negative country by 2045, to decentralising powers and resources to local government as a positive step towards increasing accountability.
Whoever becomes our next leader has a difficult job on their hands. If our party does not change, we risk languishing in the polls and losing even more of our wonderful, hard-working members of parliament. Only one of the candidates is able to lead that change and rebuild trust in our party.
If you want a leader who can rebuild our party, revive our fortunes and move us forward together, vote for Layla Moran to be our next leader!