Auspicious start to speech as they bath the stage in, er, blue light. The audience sits enthralled through Clegg’s Greatest Hits at PMQs.
Dark clothed men are removing the robopodium reader for Clegg’s walkabout.
Applause for technical crew as they get stuff off in the nick of time. Audience turning into Proms crowd.
Clapometer moves into positive. BBC Parliament subtitle him as Nick Glegg.
Talking about the future. Kicking off with snaps for Vince to get the audience on side.
Getting serious about the problems facing us all. Namechecking the weird American banks.
Gordon’s crystal ball failure. Labour offers nothing – craven protection of their own jobs, whilst all around them redundant. Living dead – no head, no heart, no soul, stumbling around. Zombie government.
Now onto the Tories: Cameron wants to strip out the offensive parts of the Tory party. But if you take out the offensive bits, there’s nothing left!
Cameron as Andrex puppy – soft, cuddly, and completely irrelevant to the product.
Tories have actually said 3,148 pages worth of policy. 1.8m words. 2500 readings of “The Gruffalo.” But actual concrete commitments? None at all.
Snaps for Large Hadron Collider joke – playing to the geeks in the audience is always a risky tactic.
The say everything – do nothing party. Big clap for “Former Thatcher employee trying to talk about poverty.”
Britain needs honesty about the situation we’re in. We need a government that listens, understand and acts. Woo, that’s us! Can we fix it? Yes, WE can, with the help of the Great British People ™
Most of the people, most of the time, will apparently do the right thing.
Everything we know from the last 50 years will change in the next 5. And optimistic liberalism will find the best in Britain.
Again with the Vince Cable coat tails. He knows which side his bread is buttered.
Big claps for getting tough on City excesses. Reckless bankers getting a resounding “no” from the Lib Dems.
Ooh, a 4-point plan. Tough on banks, tough on the causes of banks and tax cuts for STRUGGLING FAMILIES (bing bing bing)
Poor Joan. Not a dry eye in the house. Addressing the tax cut issue head on. Calling for tax rises in the past was the right thing to do. But today, hard-up families need food on the table, petrol in the car and heat in the home. Polluters, fat cats and non-doms should pay their fair share, and leave the collusion of the treasury behind.
Woo – most distributive tax plan ever from a British party – big claps for that.
Visual guide to the Clegg gags – now to be found over on Channel 4
We believe Government should spend money as wisely as money borrowed from a friend.
Other parties afraid of tax cuts because they are either too unwilling to tax the rich fairly or to check government spending is sensible.
Streamline spending and targetted tax cuts will get us going again – but we must not return to the old. We must be the first country in the world to switch to a green economy. (Better get the economics and environmental experts lined up properly then!)
Making Government people-sized and people-shaped. Extra child benefit for the summer holidays. Winter fuel allowance in March when the bills actually come in – blinding obvious when you think about it.
Reshape the health service, with patients in charge. In Sheffield, I met a constituent (bing bing bing). Individual care plans the way forward. Gone from having nothing, to having everything. Give that to every child!
Labour have made our country unfit for our children. Vote Lib Dem for happier children! (audience explode)
Education should be made people-sized and people-shaped too. Stop fingerprinting, criminalising and criticising children, like Labour do.
The Government doesn’t know what’s best for us and it never will!
New economy. New kind of government created by Lib Dems. Now, on to the road we will travel to get there. (Road? Road? not high speed rail?) Massive involvement. Returning to the real people.
End to big donations, fewer MPs, fair voting system, politics putting people first – all will stop people seeing politicians as worst than chewing gum on shoes.
Can’t tell you every step on the road – but I can tell you our destination. Government. We’re growing. We’ve already governed Wales and Scotland. We run more big cities than either of the other party. 6 million people voted for us – more than any other party in Europe.
First to fight for women’s rights, for gay rights. First to see Iraq was wrong; first to see liberal intervention in foreign affairs the right way forward.
Things can only get better? Hardly. New Labour yields to New, New Labour – Blue Labour.
The only party that can deliver social justice. Make it happen! (bing bing bing)
[Party website struggling as millions all over Britain attempt to join simultaneously]
Spotlights on the audience, stirring, copyright-free music blares, people clap for at least 8 minutes in order to reassure the press that he is liked, and pundits all over the South of England start addressing media sources. Very shortly, the full text of the speech will be available on the party website, along with a news report and a Youtube video (the video will take a number of hours to process, so expect it early evening). In the mean time… what did YOU think?
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29 Comments
Clegg’s got it wrong when he says that you can’t get a big bang out of something with no substance. Today scientists are leaning towards the idea that the sum energy of the universe could be zero. This sounds a bit weird but it’s possible because the energy inherent in a gravitational field is negative.
Gaaa!!! Now Clegg is promoting blank slate thinking . . .
Still Laurence – he gets kudos for the first quantum physics/politics crossover joke in a leader’s speech.
Another proud first for the party 🙂
Curious story about painting God considering Clegg, like me, is an atheist. Clegg and I would simply paint nothing I suppose.
250,000 automated phone calls…. I hope we’ve got the prior consent of the recipients otherwise the Information Commissioner might be a busy chap.
Guide to the clapping from one who was there:
The true, storming genuine claps were for being the only party that could delivery social justice, the most redistributive tax policy offered by a political party, the Green economy and reforming the electoral system.
Stunned but increasingly enthusiastic clap for “I can tell you where we’re headed: government.” Oh! Oh right, ok then…
Very much a we-know-what-we’re-doing clap for Iraq. So we’ve done it, we’ve escaped the Iraq and environment and nothing else calling card – without our own membership at least. Give it another four years for the press to get their heads round it.
Oh sorry, and the big clap for the wunch of bankers was a proper stormer, I’d forgotten that.
Ok, yes, and the children. I’m rubbish at this. Just as well we had a liveblog.
Er, this phone call thing… anyone got the answer to Hywel’s question?
Oh, and is there a link for a video of it?
The video will be available this evening, as it takes us quite some time to process into the right format for Youtube, etc.
Watched this on TV – 8 out of 10.
One of the best speeches I’ve heard in a long time – just wished I was there – & may have made 10 out 10 in my book.
someone has put it up anyway- very, very, impressed so far!
But hoping someone will answer the above phone question…
I thought it was pretty good – though not quite up to his speech at spring conference as the different elements didn’t quite seem to connect as well.
Mind you what is a conference speech worth – the second best I’ve heard was Charles in 2005 and he as gone a few months later.
The best IMO was Charles in 2001 with a full-throated defence of civil liberties a few weeks after 9/11)
Hywel, I agree about CK 2001. I still hold Paddy’s last Leader’s speech very tightly in my heart though. It made me cry!
Answer to the phone question – the subtle difference is that we are not asking them to vote for us – but ……. what they think of us –
I understand that political parties can make unsolicited live voice marketing calls to any number not registered on TPS, unless the subscriber has advised them directly that they do not want such calls.
Well, at least that’s what the Information Commissioner thinks.
Tha there Conference, aand this speech in particular, have got the Con and Lab blogsheres beginning to turn real narky. Well done!
“I understand that political parties can make unsolicited live voice marketing calls”
These aren’t live voice calls though
Chris Rennard has been saying that these are legitimate as they are for genuine market research purposes.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7619472.stm
Rather than hijack this thread I’ll write something fuller for LDV about why I think this is a bad idea but it will take me a bit 🙂
What makes me really angry about recorded voice calls is that I know that when I swear down the line no-on is listening.
“If you want proportional representation please press 1. If you want proportional representation by the single transferable vote in multi-member constituencies please press 2. If you have no idea what I am talking about please hang up now.”
Tony Greaves
Iain Dale is claiming that Clegg talked rubbish about Lehmans and the credit crunch. Is this right?
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6214838&postID=4854931566461165871
A good speach, I wish he would link fairness with opportunity and aspiration. There’s not much to aspire to if your marginal tax rate is 90%.
Why the phone calls are being announced in advance is beyond me. I would have thought people are more likey to put the phone down.
LiberalHammer
The answer is no, Dale is being as ridiculous and pathetic as usual. He was talking in larger terms about institutions that “we” the public are not likely to have heard about day to day. How that is beyond Mr Dale… is beyond me
Yes, I can safely say that I had never heard of those banks, and I rather wish that was still the case.
I thought the speech was brilliantly delivered. Nick is a natural at the whole wandering the stage, speaking freely, thing. It’s unfortunate for the LDs that the economic news this week has overshadowed the conference.
Great speech, but do we really have to have emotionally-manipulative incidental music? It’s supposed to be a political argument, not Rocky.
No, we need music. Rocky, Doctor Who, whatever. This is something we really need to develop.
Hard to take someone seriously who keeps banging on about helping the poor but is so out of touch he doesn’t know what the state pension payments are?
Then perhaps we could play Phantom of the Opera every time Cameron is mentioned (a la Any Dream Will Do) and have the Mr Bean theme for the PM?