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
Thorpe affair people's sympathy before turning their lives to misery with his hysterical temper-tantrums." Peter Bessell, eight years older than Thorpe, had a successful business career before entering Liberal politics in the 1950s. He came to the party leadership's attention in 1955 when, as the Liberal candidate in the Torquay by-election, he substantially increased his party's vote in the first of a series of impressive Liberal results during the 1955–59 parliament. He was subsequently selected as candidate for the more winnable constituency of Bodmin, and became both an admirer and personal friend of Thorpe, who in turn was impressed by Bessell's apparent