On Saturday OnTheWight reported that the Isle of Wight Liberal Democrat’s prospective parliamentary candidate had announced to local members via email that he would be standing aside in an Alliance with the Green Party.
Nick Stuart is today quoted in the County Press as saying that information given to members in their email was “incorrect”, but was, “corrected shortly afterwards”.
We’ve reproduced the email in full below to allow you to come to your own conclusions.
We’ve re-read the second LibDem email a number of times and can see no mention that the first email containing “incorrect information”. No mention of a correction. No mention of its retraction.
The first email is clear
Nick Stuart this afternoon confirmed to OnTheWight that only two emails were sent by the IW Liberal Democrats to members on Friday evening.
The first (see in full), sent at 7:11pm by Nick Belfitt (the membership officer for IW LibDems) was signed off by Nick Stuart, in which he said,
“I will not be standing in this General Election on the Island.”
No signal that email was ‘incorrect’
This was followed three hours later (described as “shortly afterwards” by Nick Stuart to the CP) by another email from Nick Belfitt at 10:11pm.
Nowhere within this second email does it state that the first was ‘incorrect’, it simply asks members to not share the information with non-LibDem sources.
It reads in full:
Dear Members,
Following earlier news about the PPC we would like to remind members that this new has not yet been made official to the public. Public announcement will be made in the coming week and we therefore ask if you could please do not pass this information to non Lib Dem sources.
We wanted to provide this information to you first in hope members will bring any questions to us at our AGM and up coming meetings.
We thank you for your discretion.
Thank you,
Nick Belfitt
Membership Officer of the Isle of Wight Liberal Democrats
