Category Archives: Conference

I’m off this morning to Lib Dem Conference in Brighton. It seems to me that this has the opportunity to be one of our most interesting and engaging conferences for a while.

There are some really quite interesting discussions which it’s quite difficult to call which way they will go. It has been a criticism that I and others have made in the past of conference that sometimes too much of it could be predicted in advance and isn’t saying anything too much new. But that certainly can’t be said of this year, which contains plenty of new and strong thinking.

So some of my predicted highlights for the week are below. If you’re not coming to conference you might want to watch out for some of them.

But if you won’t be there, I wouldn’t trust too much to what the mainstream media will tell you about the conference, because I can tell you now what they will be saying.

They will be saying firstly that the Leader’s authority is on the line, pending a possible defeat on the conference floor on something, and secondly that everyone is talking about how the Lib Dems will position themselves in the event of a hung Parliament after the next General Election.

I know this because this is what the media have said people are talking about conference at each of the 13 previous conferences I have been to. This will not be true. These discussions are not on the agenda and will not be seriously discussed. But it is a standard feature of Lib Dem conferences (and for all I know the other parties’ ones too) that those who have spent the week at them come to home to find media coverage describing an entirely different event than the one they have been at.

The media also have their own news priorities which rarely coincide with a full and balanced approach to reporting this event. A journalist unwittingly put it very well to me last year when he said in answer to a question about what story his paper would be running the following day, “Well if Ming loses the vote tomorrow we’ll be writing about that; if he wins it then we’ll be running on what’s happening in Lebanon”.

So if you have find yourself hearing a reporter say that “all the talk in the conference bars tonight is of…” then trust me, it isn’t. I can honestly say that over the years I have devoted my fair share of effort into researching what people are talking about in the bars at conference, and I can tell you quite clearly that whatever it is on any particular night, it jolly well isn’t what the media are reporting it is.

So, what are my particular tips for interesting debates next week: