orose

Well, technically speaking, you don't vote for the leader or the party - in your case, you (as a region) voted for Daniel Kawcyznski to represent you. Here, we voted to send John Healey to represent us, and up in Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath, they sent Gordon Brown to Westminster.

When they got to Westminster, it was decided (not very transparently) that Gordon was the man who was best placed to do the deals that get the whole party to work together for a common aim. It would have been nice if there had been an alternative, and that we could lobby our MPs to choose the leader, but no-one else who put their name forward could get the required support (of 10 MPs, I believe) to go on the ballot.

Still, it smells funny to me. I might be joining you in blowing the dust off the letter-writing regions of the brain soon. I agree with the leader debates being nonsense though - the only people who can choose those three directly are the voters in those three regions.