WHAT’S THE STORY?

The election of Jo Swinson as the first female leader of the Liberal Democrat party was well trailed, despite some last-minute nonsense about the vote being close.

She was the bookmakers’ warm favourite from the minute Sir Vince Cable said he was standing down, and for some time before that, she had been signalled out as a future leader of the party.

READ MORE: Jo Swinson elected as first-ever female LibDem leader

Despite being a minister, albeit junior, in the Tory-LibDem coalition government from 2010 to 2015 and despite being the party’s deputy leader for the last two years, there was still an air of ‘who is she’ after her big victory over Ed Davey by 47,997 to 28,021 votes was announced yesterday.

SO WHO IS SHE?

Joanne Kate Swinson is the first leader of any mainstream party to be born after the 1970s, her birthday being February 5, 1980. She was born in Glasgow and raised in East Dunbartonshire, attending Douglas Academy in Milngavie where she ran a campaign to allow girls to wear trousers – she lost but made her mark – and joined the Liberal Democrats at the age of 17.

Her first job was serving behind the counter in a McDonald’s in Glasgow at the age of 16. She completed her education at the London School of Economics. During two year spell working for a radio station in Hull, Swinson stood for her party in a parliamentary election for the first time in 2001in John Prescott’s seat of Hull East. Prescott won easily, but Swinson pipped the Conservatives to gain second place, and then she was unsuccessful in standing for the Scottish Parliament in 2003.

WHAT’S BEEN HER CAREER?

In 2005, assisted by boundary changes that brought back the East Dunbartonshire constituency, Swinson won the seat with a majority of 4,061 over Labour’s John Lyons. She was the ‘baby of the House’, the youngest MP, and in her first term was noted for her stance in calling Labour to terms over the Iraq War.

She held her seat in 2010 with a reduced majority of 2,184 over Mary Galbraith of Labour. Returning to Westminster, she became parliamentary private secretary (PPS to future Libdem leader Vince Cable, the former Glasgow councillor.

Nick Clegg brought her into the Tory-LibDem coalition government as a junior minister in 2012 after she had served a term as his PPS. The previous year she married fellow LibDem MP Duncan Hames, and they have two sons.

In 2013 she almost made the worst sort of headline when she suffered an allergic reaction to peanuts and had to be rushed to hospital. That same year saw controversy when MPs failed to offer the heavily pregnant Swinson a seat in the Commons. She was by then a junior business minister and was tipped to become Secretary of State for Scotland when Alistair Carmichael’s position was under threat.

In 2015 she lost her seat to the SNP’s John Nicolson and used her time out of politics to write a well-received book Equal Power and How You Can Make It.

She won the seat back in Theresa May’s 2017 general election and was being talked about as the party leader when Tim Farron quit but she declined to stand and was returned unopposed as Deputy Leader.

ANY CONTROVERSIES?

Her recent remarks on Question Time about Govan people failing to get into university were proved to be nonsense.

The SNP yesterday also issued a list of Swinson’s voting record: she voted for tuition fees and the bedroom tax, and she also voted for the public sector pay cap. She has also been a leader in trying to get a second vote on Europe but won’t let Scotland have indyref2.