Category Archives: Conference

Anything relating to the spring or autumn conferences

Mark Pack

Lib Dem MPs in the news

By Mark Pack | Sat 26th June 2010 - 2:20 pm

Lembit Opik is interested in becoming Mayor of London, while The Guardian has a round-up of comments from backbenchers about the Budget. Although all are anxious about one aspect or another, notably they all overall support is as with Annette Brooke:

I don’t like the budget but I dislike the economic situation we find ourselves in even more. The Lib Dems have done their utmost to address the fairness issue. In an ideal word I would not choose to put up VAT. But I was convinced, even at the hustings meeting, that the books were much worse than we

…

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Also posted in London and News | Tagged , , and | 16 Comments
Iain Roberts

So you’re a Lib Dem and you want to change the law

By Iain Roberts | Sun 23rd May 2010 - 4:20 pm

The Lib Dems, along with their predecessor parties, have had years of being very democratic: elected reps passing policy at conference, most of which has then sat buried in a dusty policy document in a filing cabinet somewhere in the bowels of Cowley Street.

Occasionally some policy or other gets plucked from obscurity to feature in an election manifesto or – the highest accolade – to be pinched by Labour or the Conservatives, rebranded as their own and even turned into law.

Now the Lib Dems are partners in the coalition government, we’re getting used to seeing big chunks of Lib Dem …

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Helen Duffett

Lib Dem Special Conference: the statistics

By Helen Duffett | Wed 19th May 2010 - 9:35 am

Here are the facts and figures from Sunday’s Special Conference:

  • Time taken to organise: 4 days – compared to the year that a Lib Dem conference usually takes. Even the Liberal-SDP merger conference of 1988 was arranged with 4 months’ notice.
  • Total number of delegates: 1650 (of whom 250 registered on the day). This was larger than any Lib Dem Spring Conference.
  • It featured the longest debate at a Liberal Democrat conference (3.5 hours)
  • Number of speakers cards submitted: 172
  • Number of speeches made: 38
  • Number of intervention cards submitted: 110
  • Number of interventions taken: 30
  • Number of amendments: 9 (all passed)
  • Speeches against the motion as a

…

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5 Comments
Stephen Tall

Who’d be a Lib Dem press officer?

By Stephen Tall | Mon 17th May 2010 - 11:00 pm

The mood emerging from Sunday’s special conference – which overwhelmingly endorsed the Lib Dem leadership’s decision to enter into a coalition agreement with the Conservatives – appears to have been almost universally positive, with even doubters rallying at the prospect of the historic opportunity open to the party.

But we wouldn’t be liberals unless we found something to critique – and on this occasion it’s been the Lib Dem media office which has got it in the neck from some supporters. The Bracknell Blog puts it reasonably (many on Twitter have been a little more splenetic):

Why was this meeeting a

…

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19 Comments
Stephen Tall

+++ Lib Dem special conference overwhelmingly approves Lib Dem / Conservative coalition agreement

By Stephen Tall | Sun 16th May 2010 - 5:20 pm

Just minutes ago, the Lib Dems’ special conference in Birmingham – convened by the party to give members the chance to give their views on the decision to enter into a government with the Conservatives – overwhelmingly approved the coalition agreement.

Estimates in the hall, where about 1,500 Lib Dem members debated the coalition, suggested that about 50 conference representatives voted against the motion endorsing the agreement: the rest of the hundreds eligible to vote were all in favour.

Here’s some of what Lib Dem Leader and Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, had to say immediately after the vote:

It is five

…

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51 Comments
Ryan Cullen

Special #ldconf live tweet coverage

By Ryan Cullen | Sun 16th May 2010 - 12:30 pm

Due to the speedy nature of the calling of this conference, the unknown knowledge of how good mobile broadband will be in the hall, and if there is enough space to sit with a laptop, the team will be covering the conference via twitter.
The last 20 tweets should be below, to view them all visit Twitter

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1 Comment
Mark Pack

Nine amendments to be debated at Birmingham special conference

By Mark Pack | Sat 15th May 2010 - 10:51 pm

Sunday’s special conference in Birmingham will debate nine amendments to the motion about the party’s coalition agreement with the Conservatives (full text of motion here).

The amendments range over why talks with Labour failed, how the party’s policy process will now work, inequality, tuition fees, the Digital Economy Act, the Human Rights Act, lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans equality, PR for local government and PR for the Commons.

You can read them in full in the Conference Extra (pdf file).

UPDATE: All the amendments were passed at conference.

9 Comments
Alex Foster

Tweetup / Liberal Drinks at special conference

By Alex Foster | Sat 15th May 2010 - 12:10 pm

We’re thrilled to be having such a busy day here at LDV with a lot of opinion articles scheduled from a wide spectrum of writers.

In all that, there’s a good chance we might lose sight of our early morning post proposing a Tweetup / Liberal Drinks meeting at the end of the special conference on Sunday.

Full details are here: http://ldv.org.uk/19520

To keep our discussion tidy, comments on this post are closed. Please comment on the first blog post from this morning.

Also posted in Events | Comments Off on Tweetup / Liberal Drinks at special conference
Alex Foster

Tweetup / Liberal Drinks at Special Conference

By Alex Foster | Sat 15th May 2010 - 8:00 am

Plans are emerging for a Liberal Drink / Tweetup at tomorrow’s special conference.

It’s been a long old while since I was at the NEC (we had a fab time at a printing exhibition ten years ago when we were replacing a folding machine. Going to a conference that included machines that could turn trees into decks of playing cards was a little OTT for a standard folding machine)

However, a bit of a look at the NEC website suggests there is a Wetherspoons on site – and it’s not terribly far from Hall 3 where the special conference …

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Helen Duffett

Special conference now open to all members

By Helen Duffett | Thu 13th May 2010 - 12:13 pm

Party President Ros Scott has emailed members with more news about this Sunday’s Liberal Democrat Special Conference.

Registration has now been extended to all members; however only voting reps are eligible to vote on the motion.

Conference is closed to journalists and media.

Registration for the Liberal Democrats’ special conference is now open to all party members. Every party member has the right to attend conference and participate in the debate (though of course only voting conference reps will have the right to vote on the motion).

You can register now via the special conference website. The website also contains the agenda for

…

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12 Comments
Mark Pack

Further details of special conference published

By Mark Pack | Wed 12th May 2010 - 7:28 pm

As reported earlier today by Helen, the party is holding a special conference in Birmingham on Sunday.

More details are now available. First, here’s the explanation from Duncan Brack (Chair of the Federal Conference Committee) about why it is being held:

The Federal Executive has called this special conference to enable the party to debate the coalition agreement reached between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party, and approved by the Federal Executive and the Parliamentary Party, on 11 May…

The motion endorsing the agreement – though not the agreement itself – is open to amendment … The amendments selected for
debate by

…

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Tagged and | 32 Comments
Helen Duffett

Liberal Democrat Special Conference called for Sunday 16 May

By Helen Duffett | Wed 12th May 2010 - 2:13 pm

Liberal Democrat Party President Ros Scott has announced a Special Conference for Liberal Democrat party members.

Note: advance registration is currently open only to those who are voting members of conference.

From Ros’s email to party members :

You will have seen from the news that the party’s Federal Executive and parliamentary party yesterday approved the coalition agreement negotiated with the Conservative Party.

Both bodies endorsed it overwhelmingly, by much more than a three-quarters majority. The provisions of the ‘triple lock’ procedure approved by conference in 1998 have therefore been satisfied, and there is no requirement for a special conference to endorse the

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Also posted in News | 14 Comments
Alex Foster

Daily View 2×2: 23 March 2010

By Alex Foster | Tue 23rd March 2010 - 7:45 am

Diagram of wings of early planeIn history, March 23rd was the day in 1903 the Wright Brothers applied for a patent on one of the earliest aeroplanes – and the day in 1933 Adolf Hitler became dictator of Germany.

It’s birthday to Joan Crawford, Wernher von Braun, José Manuel Barroso, Marti Pellow and Russell Howard.

Today in history, two people who underwent pioneering surgical procedures died: Britain’s youngest ever liver transplant patient died, aged three, and in 1982, the recipient of the first ever artificial heart died, aged 61.

2 Big Stories

All yesterday, two huge political stories raged through the online world: the farce of a Tory attempt to use social media, #cashgordon, and foreshadowing of last night’s Dispatches, which showed three Labour former cabinet ministers in a very bad light.

The newspapers catch up with the latter, but don’t seem to be covering the former.

Byers, Hewitt and Hoon suspended over lobbying allegations

The Telegraph reports:

Three former Cabinet ministers, Stephen Byers, Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon, have been suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party over allegations they tried to sway policy decisions by lobbying the Government.

The Lib Dem party line on this horrid mess which embarrasses Parliament?

Liberal Democrat Shadow Leader of the House, David Heath said, “MPs should not be using their positions to further their own interests over those of the people they should be representing. Liberal Democrats brought forward measures to restrict the influence of lobbyists in Parliament. Sadly, Labour voted them down while the Tories failed to show up. Labour and the Tories claim they want to clean up politics but the reality proves different.”

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Helen Duffett

New Lib Dem song – Hit, Miss or Maybe?

By Helen Duffett | Wed 17th March 2010 - 2:34 pm

Party members have just received this email from Lib Dem Chief Executive Chris Fox:

At our successful spring conference last weekend, a number of delegates came up to me to ask about the music they heard at the rally, opening each session and on the video before Nick’s speech. This music is called We’ll be the change that works for you and it has been specially prepared for the election. The more you listen to it the catchier it gets.

Following the positive comments we got at conference we wanted to make it available to members and supporters and I am delighted to say that it is now available via iTunes. There are a number of ways you can find it – if you go to the iTunes store and search any of the following, it’s in the top results:

The LD Community Choir (straight to track)
LD Community Choir (straight to track)
We’ll be the change
Change that works for you
Alternatively, there is a direct link using this URL (this will launch iTunes if you have it installed):

www.itunes.co.uk/theldcommunitychoir

If you are trying to access the track and have not used iTunes before, this link should then show you how to download it.

We have prepared a number of different versions, but the one available here has a long instrumental introduction that can be used for a variety of campaigning events and it ends with the rousing chorus we all heard when Nick Clegg ended his speech on Friday.

Yours,

Chris Fox
Chief Executive, Liberal Democrats

PS Of course if enough of us all download it in the same week we might just creep into the charts! Please encourage friends and family to download this as proceeds go into the campaign fund.

Lib Dem Voice didn’t receive a review copy, so I’ve coughed up my 79p and downloaded my own legal copy.

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Alex Foster

Digital economy bill must be debated in the Commons

By Alex Foster | Tue 16th March 2010 - 12:36 pm

So despite conference taking our peers out for a friendly word in their shell-like, it seems the Digital Economy Bill has successfully cleared the hurdles in the House of Lords.

Some industry experts are relying on the bill passing simply because it runs out of time, the MPs fail to scrutinize it, and it gets through thanks to the wash-up.

So now is the time to write to your MP to insist the bill gets a proper hearing in the Commons.  38 Degrees have information and a campaign to help you do that.

Also posted in LDV campaigns and News | Tagged , and | 8 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDVideo Special: Lib Dem Birmingham spring conference – Nick & Vince uncut

By Stephen Tall | Mon 15th March 2010 - 8:15 pm

Yesterday, LDVideo brought you some of the media reportage from the party’s spring conference. Today, for those of you who want to re-live it all unexpurgated, here are Nick and Vince’s conference speeches in full …

First, here’s Nick:


(Also available on YouTube here).

And here’s the 3-minute video which introduced Nick:

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The Voice

Want to catch up on LDV’s Lib Dem conference coverage? Look no further … #ldconf

By The Voice | Mon 15th March 2010 - 11:50 am

It was packed weekend here at Lib Dem Voice, just as it was for conference delegates – so if you missed our coverage because you were in Birmingham, or simply want to re-live it all again, here’s the Voice’s handy guide to the conference-related posts published this past weekend …

Nick at conference:

…

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Stephen Tall

Daily View 2×2: 15 March 2010

By Stephen Tall | Mon 15th March 2010 - 10:15 am

Happy Monday morning, everyone, and welcome to the Ides of March edition of the Daily View. (I hope David Cameron is watching his back: the Tories don’t do loyalty).

Alongside the assasination of Julius Caesar today marks the anniversary of the first Test cricket match between England and Australia (1877); the registration of the first internet domain name, symbolics.com, 25 years ago; and the 70th birthday of Frank Dobson. O frabjous day!

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

…

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Also posted in Daily View | Tagged , , and | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

Nick Clegg’s speech delivers on all fronts

By Stephen Tall | Sun 14th March 2010 - 4:45 pm

If Nick Clegg sounded a little hoarse from a sore throat throughout his leader’s speech to the Birmingham spring conference then it’s not surprising: he has been omnipresent in the media this week, winning the Lib Dems more coverage than I can remember outside of an election campaign.

The first responsibility of any Lib Dem leader’s speech is to forget that he is talking to the party faithful in the conference hall – they will vote for the party regardless – and to pitch directly to the wider public watching the speech live or on news bulletins.

The second …

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Also posted in General Election and Op-eds | Tagged and | 12 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDVideo Special: Lib Dem Birmingham spring conference

By Stephen Tall | Sun 14th March 2010 - 1:58 pm

Welcome to the latest instalment of LDVideo, where we highlight some of the best, most interesting political videos avalable on the internet. Today we focus on the Lib Dem spring conference in Birmingham, which has concluded today …


Nick Clegg states, “I am not the kingmaker”:


Vince sets out how the Lib Dems will cut public spending – but not this year:

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Also posted in YouTube | Tagged | 5 Comments
The Voice

Nick Clegg’s #ldconf speech: read it in full here

By The Voice | Sun 14th March 2010 - 12:20 pm

A hoarse-sounding Nick has just started adressing the Lib Dems’ spring conference in Birimingham. Here’s what he’s saying …

Shall I tell you the one phrase that bothers me more than any other? It’s this. “That’s just the way things are”.

No.

The way things are is not the way they have to be. We do not have to live in a country where the poorest pay the biggest chunk of their income in tax. We do not have to live in a country where politics is the plaything of wealthy donors and corrupt MPs. We do not have to live in a

…

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Also posted in News | Tagged | 17 Comments
Alex Foster

+++ PODCAST: Lib Dem #debill debate

By Alex Foster | Sun 14th March 2010 - 10:47 am

I always seem to start my podcasts with an apology. In the hurry to bring this recording to you so you can share in the debate the Lib Dems had this morning, I have not yet processed my sound file. It could do with a bit of amplification for sure. And I’m afraid I missed the vital first few moments of Bridget Fox’s speech. And after that, the speeches will be punctuated by the sounds of the hall slowly filling up as the debate progressed, and the frustration of many of the delegates that what looked like …

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Also posted in Podcasts | Tagged and | 2 Comments
Iain Roberts

+++ BREAKING: Freedom, Creativity & the Internet motion passed overwhelmingly

By Iain Roberts | Sun 14th March 2010 - 10:01 am

The last morning of conference has a traditional feel to it. Sore-headed delegates drag themselves wearily out of bed, stagger to the nearest coffee emporium, point themselves in the general direction of the conference venue and start walking, hopeful that some residual memory of that first, non-hungover, visit will get them there.

The venue opened at 8.30am and by 9 o’clock the small trickle of Lib Dem activists has turned into a slightly larger trickle.

Whether through abstinence and early night or impressive force of will, some travellers seem a little less weary.

Julian Huppert, one of …

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Iain Roberts

Can conference exhibitors find a little sparkle?

By Iain Roberts | Sat 13th March 2010 - 8:10 pm

The exhibition hall is an important part of conference, along with the debates in the main hall, fringe events, training and, of course, the conference bar.

So why are so many of the stands so dull?

Exhibition, Lib Dem Spring Conference 2010, Birmingham
(not necessarily these ones, I hasten to add).

I know it’s not easy to come up with a novel and interesting stand, especially on a limited budget, and I’ll certainly plead guilty to being as unimaginative as the next man (probably more). But conference after conference the stands look much …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 9 Comments
Helen Duffett

Teachers, Thatcher, tax and troops: Nick Clegg Q&A

By Helen Duffett | Sat 13th March 2010 - 7:26 pm

Nick Clegg answers questions at Spring Conference, Birmingham

In this afternoon’s Q&A from the Conference hall, Nick Clegg tackled questions from the floor with a relaxed and confident manner that bodes well for the upcoming TV Leaders’ Debates.

He took questions from party members in the hall, before taking supplementaries.

First up was education and whether schools should use the Pupil Premium to reduce class sizes. Nick said that the Pupil Premium seeks to give back trust to teachers and headteachers. Smaller class sizes are important for instilling a sense of self-confidence and …

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Mark Pack

Digital Economy Bill debate: what’s set to happen tomorrow?

By Mark Pack | Sat 13th March 2010 - 7:21 pm

The story so far:

  • Emergency motion on the Digital Economy Bill submitted (see full text on Bridget Fox’s blog)
  • Federal Conference Committee treat it fairly generously – as emergency motions do not normally get into the territory of drawing up significant new party policy (because, by their nature, the wording is only published at the last moment and so people have little time to debate over it, draw up alternatives etc.).
  • There are two emergency motions but only a slot to debate one of them – so conference voted this morning on which to debate tomorrow. Digital Economy Bill motion wins that

…

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Also posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Live blogging: Reports of the Federal Executive and the Federal Finance and Administration Committee

By Mark Pack | Sat 13th March 2010 - 5:43 pm

Federal Executive (FE) report moved by Ros Scott – “I hope it is a sign that you are all fairly happy with the party that the room is emptying so rapidly.” Explains FE meetings always start with a session with Nick Clegg and also gets regular updates on the general and local election campaigns.

Explains how FE has changed more to a scrutiny model (cf House of Commons select committees) and has paid particular attention to party membership/recruitment and to IT.

Update on the Bones Commission report – those within the FE’s remit have now mostly been carried out. Creation of the …

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Mark Pack

Parliamentary Parties report back to conference

By Mark Pack | Sat 13th March 2010 - 2:47 pm

Party business sessions are usually fairly thinly attended at party conference, except back in the days of disaster and near bankrupcy immiediately after the merger which formed the Liberal Democrats.

They can however play an important role, particularly where well chosen questions tease out information or get commitments on the record. James Graham’s question this morning about the Digital Economy Bill was a good example of this (and would have been even more cruicial has the emergency motions ballot not decided to debate the topic on Sunday morning).

And so, here I am back in the conference hall for part two of …

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Iain Roberts

No ring-fencing for cuts as Vince feels the love

By Iain Roberts | Sat 13th March 2010 - 1:16 pm

When the main hall is packed at a Spring Conference, you can be sure it isn’t because everyone wants to debate the third clause of the Federal Conference Committee’s report, or even (as we heard this morning) discuss the rights and wrongs of holding a conference that clashes with Mothers’ Day.

No, it’s because St. Vince of Twickenham is taking to the stage. The halo may have slipped slightly on occasion, most notably the hastily-revised Mansion Tax proposals made at Bournemouth last September, but for the party faithful it’s still Vince who can heal the sick and, if weather conditions …

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Alex Foster

PODCAST: Authoritarianism fringe

By Alex Foster | Sat 13th March 2010 - 12:48 pm

Last night a good crowd turned out to hear Paul Burstow MP, Mark Pack, Alex Wilcock and Bridget Fox talk about our new online project, Authoritarianism vs Liberalism and to talk more generally about their work and current campaigns.

Lib Dem Voice fringe meeting: Make authoritarian MPs pay at the ballot box

As ever, I was there with my trusty Zoom H2 so that we can share the fringe meeting with our listeners at home. …

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Also posted in Podcasts | Tagged | 1 Comment
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