What Tim Farron needs to be the perfect candidate

Like many libdems at the moment, I have been thinking about who to vote for as our next party president. I think Ros Scott did a great job, and she will be missed a lot, so there’s a lot for the next president to live up to.

I think Tim Farron, one of the main contenders, is great. Ever since I’ve been a regular conference-goer, and seen him at rallies, on the conference stage, at fringe events and so on, I’ve been very impressed by him. He has all the qualities I am looking for in a candidate for president- he is great at motivating the party, he seems to have his feet firmly placed on the ground and looks after his constituency well. He is not a London-centric career politician, and he appears to understand the grass-roots of the party outside Westminster. Being an MP and a good media performer will allow him to speak out for the party which is important now we need to maintain our separate identity from the coalition, and yet, from what I know, he also works hard in his constituency, keeping in touch with ‘real’ people through regular campaigning etc.

However, he has one major disadvantage as far as I’m concerned—he’s not a woman. In a situation where we have cabinet ministers but no woman, a male leader and deputy leader, as a party we desperately need a woman in a position of leadership in the party. For me, this is a big and important issue.

However, Tim can hardly help the fact that he’s not a woman. And I genuinely believe he has the best qualities for being party president. So, I cannot bring myself to vote for someone just because they are a woman- we might need women in top posts, but it needs to be the right women, based on them being the best candidate for the job.

So, I’m going to vote for Tim, but with a heavy heart, and with a call for us to do more- much more- as a party to increase our diversity. This means we need to support and encourage women with the right skills to do more within the party, to gain experience, to go for positions they are able to do. And it means doing more to enable women to overcome (and remove) the structural barriers to gaining the experience and skills they need, and getting selected for positions. We also need to ensure that women candidates are not judged in strict comparison to men, but to recognise their individual skills and values for what they are.