Although on the surface, British politics appears to have settled down a little in the last few months (Conservatives ahead, Gordon Brown in Michael Foot territory), underneath it all there is still a huge brittleness about it all.

You see it many weeks in council by-election results, where the Liberal Democrats often notch up dramatic swings from the Conservatives in by-elections in the southern-half of England.

You see it in research such as Newsnight’s focus group comparing Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg. At the start – few very had heard of Nick – but by the end – he was by far and away the most popular.

This brittleness is also there in the underlying dynamics of the big issue – the economy. Many of the most vocal and extreme exponents of the virtues of free markets, removing regulations and letting the financial markets roam free, have had their words turn to dust – and now want us, the taxpayers, to pick up the bills for their blunders. This discrediting of the deregulation zealots, added to the unappetising sight of managers crashing their firms into the ground, expecting the taxpayer to pick up the pieces – but still themselves personally walk away with large bank balances and pension pots – should be manna from heaven for those in political parties challenging the zealots.

Yet – here in Britain it is the Conservative Party riding high in the polls despite their policy proposals being so at odds with the reality of the times. Only last year – and after the turmoil in the world’s financial systems had started - the Conservative Party published an official policy review from John Redwood saying that, “We see no need to continue to regulate the provision of mortgage finance.”

Wiser heads in the Conservative Party may well now wish to back away from this – indeed, when I appeared on Question Time and Deputy Labour Leader Harriet Harman quoted these words at Conservative MP Alan Duncan, Alan denied any knowledge of where the words had come from!

But this gap between what our country needs – effective regulation, not blind faith in deregulation – and what the Conservatives want offers the Liberal Democrats an opportunity. It is the same story with tax – where our policies would focus on helping the least well-off, asking polluters and the extremely wealthy to pay more, whilst the Conservative tax cuts (in as much as they are willing to give any details) would focus on giving the most help to the most well-off.

Someone recently joked to me that just as in the US it is near-obligatory for Presidential candidates to say “God Bless America” in every speech, it is now near-obligatory for Liberal Democrats to bless Vince Cable every time – but there is a reason for this! Because Vince has helped steer the party to a very effective treble-response to these challenges: regulation where necessary (as with the banning of short-selling on financial stocks), efficiencies where possible (as with axing ID cards) and putting our priorities on helping the least, not the most, well-off.

That approach is one which I think not only commands very broad support within the party – as we saw in the votes at conference on parts of it – but also begins to give us that overall narrative which makes our policies hang together in a coherent and easy to follow way.

So – as we end our conference and wait to see how the rest of the conference plays out – I’m in a very optimistic mood!

My recent blog posting about Twitter (it’s a text message blogging service, which I’ve just started using) was unusual -in that in triggered off a sequence of other blogs posts, both on Liberal Democrat sites (e.g. on this site and on Alex Foster’s blog) and also on others (e.g. Puffbox).

I say unusual - because it’s rare to see a story start on one Liberal Democrat blog and then be picked up and spread across the Liberal Democrat blogosphere, let alone beyond the confines of the party.

The contrast with the American political blogosphere - and even right-wing blogs in the UK - is, to me, striking. And I say that particularly because, from what I’ve seen of the stats, my blog has one of the largest readerships of any Liberal Democrat blog - not in Liberal Democrat Voice’s league, but possibly second only to it. So why is it that it is so rare for my stories to be picked up and spread online, even when they are newsworthy enough for mainstream journalists to be picking them up and running with them?

Perhaps you think it’s because of something I don’t get right with my blog - but the same question applies to all the Liberal Democrat blogs I’ve seen. Despite the impressive and growing range of Liberal Democrat blogs - it seems very rare for a story to be picked up and spread.

Where stories do get spread you see two benefits - they reach a wider audience, as we don’t all have exactly the same audience, and also along the way they often pick up more facts and details as different people chip in with their own pieces of information. To go back to my Twitter posting example - if you read the three pieces linked to above, you’ll end up with a more rounded picture of how politicians could and do use Twitter than if you’d just read my original piece.

Bigger audience, better information - that’s got to be a good thing, hasn’t it? So why doesn’t it happen more often?

It’s not as if we don’t know what each other is saying. Through things like the Blogger of the Year awards at conference, the excellent LibDemBlogs aggregator, the group blogger interviews with leading party figures etc etc I think there is a real sense of community amongst Liberal Democrat bloggers, and everyone spends time reading each other.

So overall I think this is symptomatic of a wider issue - and that’s that Liberal Democrat bloggers tend to be either fairly inward or local looking. There are many blogs that really talk just about what is happening in the party, along with a smaller number of - often excellent - blogs which are clearly aimed at a particular local audience (including some particularly good councillor blogs aimed as residents in those wards - understandably enough!).

What we seem to be mostly missing are those combative, outward looking souls who spot a story and want to help spread or extend the message or the point or the attack, as opposed to inwardly looking expressing their own views on it. So you tend to get stories not spreading, and where they are commented on, they are only commented on by those who have reservations to express.

Mark Pack made a similar point at the first Blogger of the Year awards in 2006:

A lot of people feel that blogging is very much them commentating on something. They’re expressing they’re views; they’re putting them out there; they’re letting people see what they think. [But] one of the trends that is very clear in the US is that a lot of bloggers feel that rather than being commentators actually they want to be really active participants in the political process and quite deliberately use their blogs to campaign.

At the moment, it is as if Liberal Democrat blogs provide the online equivalent of committee meetings and pizza and politics events - vital but inward looking - but don’t provide the online equivalent of those outward looking activities such as leafleting and canvassing.

To me, that is the collective challenge we face if we really want to help build the party into leading a wider liberal movement that doesn’t just bring greater electoral success for us, but also brings a stronger voice to liberal causes and which reaches out and engages with those audiences that are so often disaffected with politics.

Lynne Featherstone is the party’s Youth and Equality spokesperson.