Candy Piercy

Candy Piercy has been an influential Lib Dem activist since she joined the Party as a founding member. She is probably best known in the Party as an inspiring trainer, mentor and coach. 

She has been an Agent at all levels of elections and was Deputy Director of Campaigns for the Lib Dems for nearly ten years. She guided many Lib Dem candidates to win Parliamentary seats at Westminster, Holyrood and the European Parliament. Candy was the winning Agent for the Winchester By-election in 1978, turning a majority of 2 at the 97 GE into a majority of nearly 22,000! At that point, she decided to go out on a high and stopped being employed by the Party!

Candy then set up her very successful training company, Midas Training Solutions, which trains across the UK and around the world. She has trained political and community activists in over thirty different countries, including Australia, Zanzibar, Jordan and Ukraine. 

Candy stayed super involved with the Lib Dems throughout this time. She ran Charles Kennedy’s constituency campaign in the 2001 and the 2015 General Elections. She has been a Member of the Party’s Federal Executive and the Federal Board for over fifteen years. She is now a member of the Federal Council and the LDCRE Executive Committee. 

Candy has always been passionate about supporting diversity. She has been one of the driving forces behind the Campaign for Gender Balance, which runs training, coaching and mentoring aimed at getting more women elected to Westminster, the Scottish and Welsh parliaments and to every level of local government. She is particularly proud of having helped Munira Wilson, Victoria Collins and Josh Babarinde in the early days of their successful journeys to becoming MPs. 

CGB is often seen as one of the most effective diversity initiatives ever run by the Liberal Democrats. Candy actively supports the excellent work of the RDC – the Racial Diversity Campaign, which was set up to help racially diverse candidates get elected to Parliament.

In 2014, Candy was presented with the MBE by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth for her work promoting diversity in politics around the world.