Last updated at 15:35, Wednesday, 23 May 2012

SOUTH and West Cumbrian MPs are dominating an influential political website’s shortlists for the Tweeters of the year and best speech.

Copeland MP Jamie Reed and Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Farron are pitted against each other for top Tweeter with just two other MPs vying for the title.

Mr Farron has also been nominated for best speech, in the 2012 first PoliticsHome Awards.

The nomination for Mr Reed said: “One of the funniest and most acerbic Labour tweeters out there, Jamie Reed entertains his followers with slightly surreal Coalition adaptations of fairytales, regular tirades about the passengers around him on his train journey to and from his Copeland constituency.”

And for Mr Farron: “The cheeky Lib Dem president uses his Twitter feed to keep in touch with the party’s grass roots and defend or oppose government policy in equal measure.” The MPs are up against Labour’s John Prescott and Tory Louise Mensch.

Lib Dem President Mr Farron is also up against three others in the best speech category.

The site said his speech to the party faithful at the annual conference last summer after a bad set of local election results was “very honest” and he accepted the scale of the challenge ahead but urged the party to “Get on with it!””.

Mr Reed said: “This nomination means absolutely nothing, it’s a pleasant irrelevance. Twitter is a tremendous social media tool – it would be excellent if more constituents used it to interact.

Mr Farron said: “I use Twitter in the same way I use street surgeries, or hold one of my regular advice surgeries; it allows me to be available to local people and for them to ask me questions.”

Subscribers to the website can vote.

First published at 15:34, Wednesday, 23 May 2012
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk