I've just remembered that back in April I predicted that, whatever the overall outcome, there would be a maximum of four women Conservative councillors in Kingston after the election. (There were only two of them before May)
Of the 21 Tory councillors elected in May, precisely three are women.
I live in Hook - the one in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, not the one on Hampshire -.and blog about local things that interest me, and sometimes about the big political issues as well.
I was a Liberal Democrat councillor for Chessington North and Hook ward from 1997-2010, and retired undefeated.
Published by Mary Reid, 126 Clayton Road, Hook Chessington KT9 1NJ
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Number of Lib Dem MPs who are women - 6 out of 57
Lib Dem women in cabinet - Zilch
Lib Dem Women ministers - 2
Number of Lib Dem MPs from ethnic background - zilch
Glashouses come to mind!
If you read my original post you'll see that I was commenting on the proportion of candidates who were women. The number who actually get elected is in the hands of the electorate.
In the General Election the Lib Dems had a high proportion of women (and ethnic minority) candidates - very strong ones at that - in target seats. The fact that so few were elected is very disappointing, and the electors in North Kingston played some part in that.
At the last election the Lib Dems would have had to have won 92 seats before they elected a MP who was not white. There were only four ethnic minority candidates in your top 100 target seats. Not a single seat where a Lib Dem MP stood down were they replaced by a candidate from an ethnic minority background.
The Lib Dems are shamefully white, male and elitist with most of the senior parliamentary party coming from Oxbridge, independent schools or Grammar Schools they want to abolish. The Lib Dems had the lowest number of female candidates of the three main parties. The number of women in the Lib Dem Parliamentary party went down disproportionately. In fact. it was because women in your party lost that you ended up with less seats than the last Parliament.
Had it not been for you propping up the Conservative Government I am sure some very searching questions would have been asked of the performance of Clegg and his campaign team.
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