It’s less than 9 weeks until Federal Conference in Glasgow. And late on the Saturday night of Conference, for the 9th year, Liberal Democrat Voice will be holding  annual awards.  As usual, they’ll be awarded in a budget lavish and deliciously random ceremony in Castle 3 at the Crowne Plaza between 10 and midnight. The dress code is “imaginative.”

There will be a fantastic selection of Liberal Democrats presenting the awards. You can read about last year’s ceremony, where Nick Clegg called us infuriating and inspiring here.

We revamped the Awards last year and people seemed to like what we have done, so we’ve kept the format the same with one wee tweak. We think that we should give your imaginations free rein with the photoshopping and the parliamentarians so there’s a separate category for them.

This year’s awards are as follows:

• Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year
• Liberal Democrat Blog-post of the year
• Liberal Democrat Tweeter/Facebooker of the Year
• Best use of social media by an elected representative (Tim Garden award)
• Best online campaign run by a Liberal Democrat
• Lib Dem Councillor of the Year
• The Lib Dems’ Favourite Tory MP award
• The Lib Dems’ Favourite Labour MP award
• Best online campaign of the year (non Lib Dem)
• Best photograph of a Liberal Democrat Parliamentarian (real life)
• Best photo-shopped photo of a Liberal Democrat Parliamentarian

We are asking for nominations for the shortlists for these awards. They will then be judged by our esteemed panel of judges. Liberal Democrat Voice and any official blogs run by the party aren’t eligible either.

Send us your nominations plus a very brief – and I’m talking no more than a sentence – reason why. We will then compile the shortlists from those and poll to our members’ forum.

You’ve got until  31st August to nominate your favourites, but the sooner the better (and you can send more than one set if you’d like). Please don’t feel the need to round up hundreds of people to nominate your blog as the number of nominations aren’t taken into account.

Send in your nominations by email to [email protected] and remember to state which award category you’re nominating for, in each case.

The shortlists will then be put to a vote of our forum of party members. That’s right. This year, we are giving our readers who are members of the party the chance to choose the majority of our winners.

There are other awards that you will have the chance to vote for:

• Lib Dem Minister of the Year
• Lib Dem MP of the Year
• Lib Dem parliamentarian (non-minister) of the Year (open to MSPs, MEPs, Peers, AMs GLAMs

All will be eligible for these categories.

And there’s even more than that…

• Best Political Commentator (print/online) of the Year
• Best Political Broadcaster (TV/radio) of the Year

These last two awards will be chosen form a shortlist based on the answers in our pre-Conference survey. Again, all members in our members’ forum will have the chance to vote.

So there you have it. I hope you all get involved and enjoy the nominating and voting processes. In the olden days, people would do their own blog posts saying who they were nominating and why. Feel free to share the news of these awards far and wide.

This, by the way is not the only thing Liberal Democrat Voice is doing at Conference this year. Watch out for details of our other event in due course…

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social