/ 2 March 2006

Lib Dems to name leader after controversial contest

Britain’s smaller opposition Liberal Democrats were to crown their new chief on Thursday after a leadership contest dogged by scandals involving alcoholism, gay chat lines and male prostitutes.

Bookmakers reckoned acting leader Menzies Campbell was just ahead of economics spokesperson Chris Huhne with party president Simon Hughes trailing in the race to lead Britain’s third-biggest party.

The choice is important as the left-leaning centrist Lib Dems have a fine line to tread in fighting the centre-left governing Labour Party in some constituencies and the centre-right main opposition Conservatives elsewhere.

About 73 000 party members were entitled to vote, with the result due to be announced at around 3pm (3pm GMT). If there is no outright winner, second preference votes come into play.

“I am optimistic but not complacent,” former Olympic sprinter Campbell said ahead of the result.

The foreign affairs spokesperson was at 8/11 with bookmaker Ladbrokes as the voting closed on Wednesday, while parliamentary newcomer Huhne was quoted at evens. Hughes, who drives about in a taxi, was at 20/1.

The leadership contest has been marred by a string of scandalous revelations.

It was triggered by the forced resignation of recovering alcoholic Charles Kennedy, knifed by colleagues in early January after he admitted to a booze problem that had long been rumoured in Westminster corridors.

Mark Oaten (41) the party’s home affairs spokesperson and a married father of two, threw his hat into the ring but pulled out and resigned following newspaper allegations of gay sex with rent boys nearly half his age.

The mass-circulation News of the World weekly said he demanded group sex with a 23-year-old prostitute and ordered him and another rent boy to perform an “unspeakable act of degradation” on him, leaving the Liberals reeling.

Unmarried left-leaning veteran Hughes then admitted he was not a heterosexual in The Sun daily newspaper after he was caught phoning the gay chat line ManTalk.