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| Lib Dems: Jo Swinson elected new leader | Lib Dems: Jo Swinson elected new leader |
| (32 minutes later) | |
| Jo Swinson has become the first female Liberal Democrat leader, after decisively beating Sir Ed Davey in a poll of party members. | |
| She received 65% of the vote in the contest. | |
| The 39-year old, who succeeds Sir Vince Cable, said she was "over the moon" to have been elected and was "ready for the fight of our lives". | |
| She told activists the UK's future lay in the European Union and she would do "whatever it takes to stop Brexit". | |
| Describing Boris Johnson, the frontrunner in the contest to be the next Conservative leader, as "unfit to be prime minister", she said her party was ready to return to government. | |
| "I stand before you today not just as leader of the Lib Dems, but as a candidate to be prime minister. There is no limit for my ambition for my party, my movement and my country. | |
| "I am ready to take my party into a general election and win it." | |
| Ms Swinson, who has been the party's deputy leader since 2017, was a business minister in the Lib Dem-Conservative coalition government. | |
| She regained her East Dunbartonshire seat in 2017 after losing it two years earlier. | |
| She told supporters the party had enjoyed a remarkable turnaround over the last two years and it was clear "liberalism is alive and thriving". | |
| Ms Swinson said the UK's vote to leave the EU marked a "retreat" from the world and the UK "pulling up the drawbridge". | |
| The next generation, she said, would be "less free to live, work and love across Europe". |