Tim Farron has denied there will be a "blame culture" in the Liberal Democrat inquiry into the AV referendum.
His comments come after The Guardian highlighted misspent money and demoralised staff as two issues raised by the recently launched investigation.
It was revealed on Monday that the Liberal Democrats were holding an official inquiry into the AV campaign, separate to their examination of Scottish, Welsh and local elections.
Today, Farron, the Lib Dem party president, told me why he decided to launch the investigation.
"After every set of elections, we have a review," he explained. "It's run by the campaigns and communications committee which is a sub-committee of the party's federal executive that I chair as president.
"This year, because we had the referendum as well as the local, Scottish and Welsh elections, I asked for the review [into AV].
"It made sense and lots of other people thought it was the right thing to do anyway."
He agreed that there were "other fish to fry" but it was "right" to hold an internal inquiry now.
"There is a great sense that people have moved on from it. I don't get any sense of any blame culture going about. We all have our views, but you shrug and you move on. I guess I am used to that as a Liberal Democrat, there are two things over 25 years – one is losing stuff and the other is not giving up."
He continued: "We lost but we don't cry over spilt milk. Don't take it as some really, really, dismal, unpleasant post-mortem. But why not learn some lessons?"
When pushed on how the information got out, he responded: "It's being run by the campaigns and communications committee rather than me but obviously it's got out into the public domain recently. We are planning to do something public on it as well – a call for evidence from party members. But it got out there already.
"We very much welcome any comments people have got. Send them over to headquarters and we will be sifting them all and making sure they're all considered."
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