The leadership of the One Bermuda Alliance should be settled next month when the party holds a general conference.

Jarion Richardson, the interim leader, said the rules of the contest will be decided by party executives, but the general outline would be for people to put their names forward and give a presentation at the conference after which voting will take place.

Cole Simons stepped down as OBA leader at the beginning of August, and it is understood that the party decided to wait for the subsequent by-election, won by Ben Smith, before holding a leadership contest.

Asked if the delay meant losing some momentum, Mr Richardson, who confirmed that he would be standing for leader, said there were both risks and benefits.

“Well, I'll talk about the benefits. My personal philosophy is, measure twice and cut once. So, what you really want to do is make sure that you optimise these opportunities.

“We want to make sure that we're within the constitution, make sure that the party officials are all made aware and the party members are made aware. Part of that, for example, is our membership meetings that we have now on a formal, regular basis.

“So, we wanted to make sure that we just got it done properly, because what we don't want to do is find ourselves in the middle of a constitutional issue.”

He added: “It's easy to say that you risk losing momentum, but to be fair, at this point, what we're trying to do is make sure that our momentum is again optimised, so that we're paying attention to the pieces.

“It's not just the candidate rollouts, it's not just the pop-ups, it's not just the canvassing, it's not just the blitzes, it's not just the membership meetings, it's all of these things put in order so that we're gaining more and more momentum so that when we do go into conference, we have as many members as possible, and those members have been properly appraised of what's taking place and feel confident in their vote.”