Author Archives: Ulysse Abbate

After the newly-elected VP of the ALDE Party Malik Azmani centred his speech on cleverly-created ABBA puns, I question if this follow up article on the ALDE Congress could ever match that same energy and do the Congress justice. “Knowing me”, I’ll have to ask you all to “Take a Chance” on my bad puns, and hope that my lack of linguistic ability doesn’t lead to my reputation “slipping through my fingers” (sorry…).

Reflecting on my expectations, I was right in looking at the ALDE Congress through the lenses of bridge-building and policy-making, both of which were successful elements of the Congress. However, one particular area I unexpectedly found to be of great value was the ‘learning best practice’ element , where we could use successes (and indeed, failures) of partners from across our Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe to better inform the Liberal Democrats’ own activities and make us the far more effective fighting force we have the potential to be (think pre-2010).

With the talented David Chalmers, Hannah Bettsworth and Isabelle Pucher arriving days early to meet with our international partners from Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Northern Ireland, the building bridges aspect of our Congress kicked off strongly. Forging links that, with our untimely exit from the EU, bring together countries not in the bloc, but very close to it (Lib Dem Baroness Sal Brinton alluded to the need for a forum between liberal parties in these countries). Throughout the weekend, we continued getting to know our European colleagues, from Iceland to Ukraine, Norway to Portugal, something that will become all the more important as the UK prepares its general election, and our internationalist credentials stand to be proven to our voters: we are, after all, the only UK party to work with countries in Europe (in the EU and beyond) to this extent.