Category Archives: Conference

Anything relating to the spring or autumn conferences

Stuart Bonar

How many failed the conference security checks?

By Stuart Bonar | Mon 5th December 2011 - 10:24 am

Before conference there were lots of pieces here on Lib Dem Voice about the new security hurdles over which people wanting to attend conference would have to jump. There was the occasional piece defending the new arrangements, but most were pretty hostile.

I am not usually one to pick at scabs, but I thought that once the dust had settled on conference season I would ask each of the police forces responsible for security at the three main conferences for some hard numbers. Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act I did just that.

What were the figures for the …

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George Kendall

Opinion: Labour’s problem

By George Kendall | Thu 13th October 2011 - 2:25 pm

There’s been nothing dramatic about this conference season apart from a few gaffes, but under the surface, I think the Labour conference was significant.

While I enjoyed the Lib Dem conference, I don’t think the journalists did. Whenever I passed a well-known TV presenter, they had a face like thunder. They were looking for factionalism and controversy, but all they found was Lib Dems facing up to a difficult situation with determination and loyalty. That makes dull TV, so they must have been tearing their hair out.

The Tory conference was more entertaining.

Theresa May’s remark about cats, and the more recent

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Nick Tyrone

Opinion: Theresa May’s cat – why we should be proud of our conference

By Nick Tyrone | Sat 8th October 2011 - 2:50 pm

The vast majority of Lib Dems who attended autumn conference would agree with me in saying that it was a success. The mood surrounding the ICC Birmingham was unmistakably positive. The feared factionalism that had been predicted by some never materialised. But what really makes our conference seem amazing, in retrospect, is just how badly the respective Labour and Conservative gatherings have played out.

Labour conference was up first. As the only major party of opposition this should have been a conference to remember for them. A year of riots, phone hacking and a poor economy gave them more ammunition than …

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Alex Wilcock

Opinion: Making it easier to follow conference

By Alex Wilcock | Sun 2nd October 2011 - 12:25 pm

Liberal Democrats returned home last week from another Conference: holding government ministers to account; debating policy (even nearly managing the rare feat of throwing out a policy paper); catching up with friends. But while it’s fresh in Conference Committee’s minds, I have some small suggestions for next time. Talking to Lib Dems who may not have read every word of the Agenda or Conference Daily updates, and to people who were watching at home on BBC2 or BBC Parliament in their vast ratings of one or two, just a few simple changes could make Conference a lot easier …

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Mark Pack

Someone likes Liberal Democrat conference…

By Mark Pack | Sun 2nd October 2011 - 9:50 am

Over on Dale & Co Gareth Knight writes:

Any Conservative, including Iain Dale who attends the Liberal Democrat conference, remarks how impressed they are with the mere fact the conference is where party members openly and robustly confer on policy. The exhibition stands at the Liberal Democrat conference include dozens of party groups as well as the recent deluge of large companies and organisations desperate to suck up to the party they’ve proudly ignored until now. The agenda for conference is focused on policy papers with speeches for and against where the party leadership will frequently get involved in the

…

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Paul Childs

Opinion: Catching the Liberal Democrat conference bug

By Paul Childs | Sun 25th September 2011 - 9:40 am

When I first decided to go to Liberal Democrat Conference last autumn, I have to admit I was a little swayed by it being in my home town, but being a Federal Conference First Timer I did have concerns about not knowing anyone. Luckily, a friend who is also a conference veteran (at both LibDem and Labour I must add) took me under his wing and even humored me when going to training sessions.

I also met up with some people in both Liverpool and Glasgow and managed to bend their ears about issues, as well as adding new and interesting …

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Kelly-Marie Blundell

Conference has invigorated the party!

By Kelly-Marie Blundell | Sat 24th September 2011 - 6:55 pm

Liberal Democrats at grassroots level across the country had been suffering since our landslide defeat in local elections and the defeat of the Alternative Vote referendum in May 2011. This has led, I believe, to a reduction in political engagement across the party at a local and national level.

That is why the autumn conference was both an opportunity to look to the future, and to celebrate Liberal Democratic core values and successes within the Coalition. Phoenixes of a feather flocked together in Birmingham last week, and immediately campaigners felt more at ease and more positive.

Despite valid concerns about levels …

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Maureen Rigg

Opinion: Who will keep us safe from the men in black with big guns?

By Maureen Rigg | Sat 24th September 2011 - 4:55 pm

Party conferences are different when you’re in government as we found out at Liverpool last year. I didn’t go to Sheffield in spring but I heard from good friends that some of the demonstrators there were very aggressive and made it difficult for people with mobility problems to safely access the conference.

This year at Birmingham I saw something new again – machine guns being carried by police outside the conference. This wasn’t by officers patrolling the streets outside the secure zone. No, it was inside, where people had already come past 3 separate checks that …

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Mark Pack

A messaging mess: what Liberal Democrats are achieving in government

By Mark Pack | Fri 23rd September 2011 - 11:55 am

As I wrote in the immediate aftermath of Nick Clegg’s conference speech, the party was much better at saying what it was not and what it was against – not the Conservatives, not unhappy, against tax cheats, against overpaid under-performing company directors and so on – than what it was for.

In theory the answer should have been found in the conference packs handed out to people on arrival at the Birmingham ICC, for inside them was not only an “In government – on your side” leaflet but also three others from different Liberal Democrat ministers, all promoting the party’s …

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Mark Pack

The most striking statistic from Liberal Democrat conference

By Mark Pack | Thu 22nd September 2011 - 8:50 am

Steve Webb, speaking to Lib Dem conference:

I found out that I was, indeed, the 11th different pensions minister in the last 14 years.

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Stephen Tall

What Lib Dem bloggers and tweeters have said about Nick’s speech

By Stephen Tall | Wed 21st September 2011 - 5:59 pm

There’s always a bit of an irony with blogging and party conferences — at the time when the media are most looking for reaction from activists to the leader’s speech most of them are hot-footing it to the train station to return to their normal lives outside the conference bubble.

However, a few Lib Dems have had chance to put finger to keyboard in response to Nick Clegg’s address to close the Liberal Democrat conference in Birmingham. Here are those I’ve spotted so far on the Aggregator…

…

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Mark Pack

Nick Clegg’s speech to LibDem Conference

By Mark Pack | Wed 21st September 2011 - 3:51 pm

During Liberal Democrat conference someone watching it from home texted me: “I now know what the Lib Dems are against – bankers, top rate taxpayers, tax cheats generally, overpaid directors and energy companies But, with the single exception of gay marriage, I’ve got no idea what the Lib Dems are for.”

Some will – rightly – quibble over the ‘against’ list in that but the essential point is a fair one. Liberal Democrat conference has been a lot about what won’t happen or isn’t the case: the coalition isn’t going to end early, the Liberal Democrats are not the same as …

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Steve Webb MP

Steve Webb’s speech to the Liberal Democrat conference

By Steve Webb MP | Wed 21st September 2011 - 9:25 am

The other day, someone came up to me and said:

“Steve, you’re an above-average pensions minister!”

In a world where praise can be a bit hard to come by, I took that as a compliment.

But he quickly said:

“No, I didn’t mean that you’re good at your job, I meant you’ve survived longer than most pension ministers!”

And when I inquired, I found out that I was, indeed, the 11th different pensions minister in the last 14 years.

So it is hardly suprising that pensions policy has been a bit piecemeal and messy over the years.

Every change with the best of intentions, but put it …

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Mark Pack

Liberal Democrats Conference round-up and preview: Tuesday/Wednesday

By Mark Pack | Wed 21st September 2011 - 8:17 am

What happened on Tuesday in Birmingham at Liberal Democrat conference and what to watch out for today, Wednesday:

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Chris Huhne MP

Chris Huhne’s speech to Liberal Democrat conference

By Chris Huhne MP | Tue 20th September 2011 - 10:47 pm

One abiding set of values that all Liberal Democrats share is a respect for our environment, natural systems and sustainability.

With this conference’s backing, we will hold course to be the greenest government ever.

No more, no less.

But are we still on course?

Well, I can hardly pick up a Tory paper these days without a whinge about energy and climate change policies.

It’s been nip and tuck between Vince and me in recent months to win an unpopularity poll – that’s on Conservativehome among Tory activists.

So as we assert Lib Dem values within government, we must be doing something right – or is …

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Mark Pack

Vince Cable does gloom

By Mark Pack | Tue 20th September 2011 - 4:25 pm

The public’s attitude towards gloomy politicians is a curious one: only too happy to mock politicians who only talk up the positive but also frequently going off politicians who talk up the negatives. It happens across all parties, as we saw in the last Parliament where both Alistair Darling and George Osborne tried talking gloomily about the country’s economic difficulties and, far from being met by public support for their frankness, saw widespread criticism and slipping poll ratings. Journalists may love knocking politicians for not having been gloomier during the 2010 general election, but all the nearly all the signs …

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Mark Pack

The significant part of Tim Farron’s speech

By Mark Pack | Tue 20th September 2011 - 12:55 pm

Tim Farron is probably the Parliamentary Party’s best funny speech maker (though I’d pay good money to see him head-to-head in a laugh off with Alistair Carmichael), so it’s not a surprise that Tim’s speech to Liberal Democrat conference caught the headlines mostly for his humour and his stress-testing of political marriage analogies to destruction.

Yet there was a significant section about how Liberal Democrat ministers act and his own role:

There are 18 Liberal Democrats who don’t have the luxuries that I do.

They can’t just sound off if they don’t like government policy or trot through the no lobby on

…

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Tom Papworth

Opinion: I’d rather be boring than bonkers

By Tom Papworth | Tue 20th September 2011 - 9:35 am

Monday night’s Channel 4’s coverage of the Liberal Democrat conference ended with Michael Crick interviewing Ann Treneman and Michael White about the general feel amongst Lib Dems.

Among the usual sniping from a reactionary sketch-writer and the doyen of the urban intellectual elite came a lament that the Liberal Democrat conference did not feel like a Liberal Democrat conference. People were too on message, they moaned; there was not enough rebellion; nor enough eccentricity. Michael White in particular bemoaned the absence of beards and sandals. Lib Dem conference, they felt, had become boring.

Too right.

We are not in the 1970s, when …

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Mark Pack

Liberal Democrats Conference round-up and preview: Monday/Tuesday

By Mark Pack | Tue 20th September 2011 - 7:19 am

What happened on Monday in Birmingham at Liberal Democrat conference and what to watch out for today, Tuesday:

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Stephen Tall

LDVideo at Conference | Clegg & Cable on the economy; Andrew Neil’s take on the conference; and the power of Lib Dem conference reps

By Stephen Tall | Tue 20th September 2011 - 7:10 am

At Birmingham and so missing out on how the Lib Dem conference is being reported? Not at Birmingham and so missing out on seeing Lib Dem MPs and government ministers up close and personal? We hope these videos will help re-connect you…

Clegg welcomes Jaguar jobs boost; Cable warns of economic equivalent of war


(Available on the BBC website here.)

Andrew Neil’s Liberal Democrat conference report

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Mark Pack

“All-Women Shortlists May Be Necessary, Senior Lib Dems Accept”

By Mark Pack | Mon 19th September 2011 - 10:23 pm

So reports the Huffington Post:

Senior Liberal Democrats have accepted that the party may need to resort to all-female shortlists or other tough measures to increase the representation of women and minority groups among its MPs…

Tim Farron MP … said that he was “utterly embarrassed” that only seven of the party’s MPs were women.

He said:

“Over the years we’ve had several debates on the crushing lack of women in the House of Commons, and our zero lack of representation from black and ethnic minority communities, and the debates we’ve always had are about the practical way to create equality and the

…

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Jo Swinson MP

Jo Swinson MP writes: Quality of Life – A New Purpose for Politics

By Jo Swinson MP | Mon 19th September 2011 - 8:27 pm

Decade on decade, the UK has been getting richer. For the most part, people today are materially considerably better off than they were back in the 1970s; however, statistics stretching back all those years show that our satisfaction with our lives has barely improved. We have more money and we’re pumping out more carbon emissions – but we don’t appear to be getting much pay-off for our own wellbeing.
 
Fortunately, the Liberal Democrats have recognised this problem.
 
For over two years, a working group has been studying the evidence to see whether Government can actually do anything to set us on a …

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James Kempton

Opinion: Conference perspective – media, message and motivation

By James Kempton | Mon 19th September 2011 - 6:22 pm

Looking at the media coverage of the last 24 hours at Conference, it’s all been about tax, boardroom pay and jobs – tackling Labour’s economic legacy. 

But yesterday in the Main Hall, and today in many of the fringes, delegates have also been debating another theme – social mobility, or as Sarah Teather, our Education Minister, powerfully put it – the challenge of breaking the link between the circumstances of a child’s birth and his or her fate. The fact that in this country the richest 16 year-olds are three times as likely …

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Vince Cable

Vince Cable’s speech to LibDem conference

By Vince Cable | Mon 19th September 2011 - 4:39 pm

You can watch Vince’s speech to the Lib Dem conference here…


(Available on the BBC website here.)

Or you can read the text in full here…

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Sarah Teather

Poverty and achievement: breaking the link – Sarah Teather’s speech to conference

By Sarah Teather | Mon 19th September 2011 - 3:50 pm

Sarah Teather, Liberal Democrat Minister of State for Children and Families, gave this speech yesterday to Liberal Democrat conference:

“Education… beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery.“

The quote is from HoraceMann, the great 19th century American reformer. But it speaks to the instincts of liberals here with as much resonance as then.

The scandal is that though it should be true, it isn’t.

You will hear many people talk this week about the shocking state of the nation’s finances that was Labour’s legacy. I want to talk about another …

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Stephen Tall

LDVideo at Conference | Hugh Grant, Nick Clegg and Party Animals

By Stephen Tall | Mon 19th September 2011 - 10:45 am

At Birmingham and so missing out on how the Lib Dem conference is being reported? Not at Birmingham and so missing out on seeing Lib Dem MPs and government ministers up close and personal? We hope these videos will help re-connect you…

Hugh Grant presses phone hacking issue at Lib Dem conference


(Available on the BBC website here.)

Don’t forget our LDV caption competition — Nick Clegg meets Hugh Grant — is still open for entries…

Nick Clegg: Immoral to drop 50p tax

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The Voice

LibDem Conference passes drugs motion

By The Voice | Mon 19th September 2011 - 10:15 am

From a party press release:

Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference passed Protecting Individuals and Communities from Drug Harms, which calls for an independent panel to review current drug laws.

Commenting, Co-Chair of the Home Affairs Parliamentary Party Committee, Tom Brake MP said:

“Drugs can have a devastating impact on individuals and families and can fuel organised crime. Evidence shows that our current drug policy is costly, ineffective and it is the poor and marginalised who suffer most.

“Today, Liberal Democrats reaffirmed our support for an evidenced based drugs policy, calling for an independent panel to review current drug laws.

“We want to ensure the Government …

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The Voice

Did you miss Tim Farron’s speech? Catch up with it (and the reaction) here…

By The Voice | Mon 19th September 2011 - 9:55 am

Lib Dem party president Tim Farron’s conference speeches have quickly established themselves as must-see events: bluntly honest and genuinely funny, Tim always gets a reaction. And not just from Lib Dem conference-goers if the media reaction is anything to go by…

If you missed Tim’s speech you can catch up with it here. Full text follows…

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Mark Pack

Liberal Democrats Conference round-up and preview: Sunday/Monday

By Mark Pack | Mon 19th September 2011 - 8:21 am

What happened on Sunday in Birmingham at Liberal Democrat conference and what to watch out for today, Monday:

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Chris White

Opinion: Why I’m supporting creators but opposing the Digital Economy Act

By Chris White | Mon 19th September 2011 - 7:55 am

Kevin (not his real name) drives his son Danny to the shops. Danny pops in and emerges with various items in a bag, for which he has paid. In his pocket there is a packet of biscuits which he trousered while collecting the other items. CCTV spots the fact that he has done it and he is prosecuted for shoplifting.

A few weeks later, Kevin’s garage makes contact and says that the Government has issued an order that he take his car into the garage to be adjusted so that it can do no more than 30 miles per hour. He …

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