Lots of people have been commenting on their favoured candidate for Party President and I will do in time. Not before I've said a proper thank you to Ros Scott, though, who I think has been an absolutely brilliant holder of that office.
It wasn't a difficult decision for me to back her for President in 2008. The work she put in was phenomenal. She came up to help us in Scotland in the 2007 election and spent huge amounts of time and her own money travelling round the country listening and helping. At that time it looked unlikely that she would beat the frontrunner Lembit Opik, but she refused to accept that, got her head down, worked hard, and won the admiration of an emphatic majority of the voting membership.
And she's been an amazingly practical president, doing exactly what she said she would do, delivering the change that the party needed at an organisational level to work better, listening to what the grassroots are saying. I've really appreciated the way she's been interested in Scotland, how she's tramped the streets from Dunfermline to Durness
She's been the President, and therefore chair of the Party's important Federal Executive, at the most historic time for the party in 80 years. You can imagine the strength of feeling there must have been during the coalition negotiations, the tension in the room. She had to deal with that, make sure everyone had their say, yet move the many meetings on to making a decision. And she did it amazingly.
And she's done all of this in the first two years of her marriage to Lady Mark.
I have to say I was gutted when I found out last Saturday that she had decided not to seek another term, but I understand her reasoning.
She's been an incredibly calm, practical, perfect President for our time and I just wanted to put on record my appreciation of her. I'm sure that by the end of next week she'll know that the Party is 100% 4 Ros.
1 comment:
Hear, hear.
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