Jeremy Thorpe 1,166. After the 1966 election, Grimond confided to senior party officials that he wished soon to step down from the leadership. Thorpe was now the senior Liberal MP after Grimond, and the party's highest-profile member, although Timothy Beaumont, chairman of the party's organising committee, noted in his diary: "I am pretty certain that he has little popularity within the Parliamentary Party". When Grimond finally resigned, on 17 January 1967, an election to replace him was arranged to take place within 48 hours, leaving little time for manoeuvring. The 12 Liberal MPs formed the whole electorate; after the first ballot, Thorpe
Jeremy Thorpe to avoid prolonging the trial, since it was clear that the prosecution's case was "shot through with lies, inaccuracies and admissions". In the 2005 general election campaign Thorpe appeared on television, attacking both the Conservative and Labour parties for supporting the Iraq War. Three years later, in 2008, he gave interviews to "The Guardian" and to the "Journal of Liberal History". York Membery, the Liberal journal's interviewer, found Thorpe able to communicate only in a barely audible whisper, but with his brain power unimpaired. Thorpe asserted that he "still had steam in my pipes"; reviewing the current political situation, he