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
Ronald Gardner-Thorpe Ronald Gardner-Thorpe Colonel Sir Ronald Laurence Gardner-Thorpe (13 May 1917 – 11 December 1991), was a British company director and Liberal Party politician who also became Lord Mayor of London in 1980. Gardner-Thorpe was the son of Joseph Gardner and Hannah Coulthurst Thorpe. He was educated at St John's College, Portsmouth. In 1938 he married Hazel Mary Dees. They had one son. Gardner-Thorpe was Liberal candidate for the Eastbourne division of Sussex at the 1959 General Election. The Liberals had not run a candidate at the previous election in 1955. He managed a respectable 18% poll, finishing third. He was