LibDemVoice are hosting four events at conference – fuller details are available here.
As the week motors on, the evening planned for our Liberal Drinks / Tweetup night approaches.
We’ll be in the Baltic Fleet pub from 7.30pm onwards tonight having a friendly drink in a real ale pub and getting ready for Glee Club.
If you’d like to come along, why not click here to let your twitter friends know.
Over at the Financial Times, Alex Barker has an entertaining compilation of the highs and lows, serious and tragic, of Lib Dem conferences down the years. My favourite two:
7. The White Witch denounces bad vibes around Simon Hughes
This incident is still used to train budding Lib Dem conference chairs. At the end of a particularly long and tedious debate on commerce policy, the chair relucantly gave way to a point of order. “I am a witch,” the lady told the stunned conference hall. She went on to explain she had detected “evil spirits particularly concentrated on Simon Hughes”. Ever since,
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Yesterday saw the first Q&A of the Lib Dem leader since entering government. We covered it on Lib Dem Voice with a live tweeting session, Stephen Tall’s excellent live-blog and we also recorded it for posterity.
Because quite a lot of what was said might be useful for campaigning purposes, and because in the fullness of time we will want to hold Nick Clegg to account for his answers, I asked BOTY-nominee and Total Politics List star Caron Lindsay to mobilise an army of volunteers to transcribe it from our slightly ropey recording.
Caron and her volunteers have …
Iain Dale and Brian Brivati have once again compiled for the Telegraph the list of 50 most influential Lib Dems, and today saw the publication of part one, covering numbers 26 to 50.
At 50 is leader of the Welsh Lib Dems, Kirsty Williams; while propping up today’s list — just outside the top 25 — is Nick Clegg’s special advisor, Richard Reeves, the former head of think-tank Demos. There are a number of new entries, many of them MPs who now find themselves government ministers, including Andrew Stunell (28), Nick Harvey (32), David Heath (33), Tim Farron (34), Lord …
Over at the Financial Times, former Lib Dem chief executive Lord (Chris) Rennard surveys the political scene and suggests policy areas where Nick Clegg can show how the party is making an impact in government. Chris notes the problems of being the junior party in a Coalition:
Junior coalition partners in many countries are familiar with getting the blame for what is unpopular and failing to get the credit for what goes well. Nick Clegg’s first priority has to be to show that the coalition works – even with unlikely partners – while maintaining the party’s distinctiveness. If he cannot demonstrate
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As the music fades, and the hoardes of conference delegates file out of the Liverpool hall, what did Voice readers make of what he had to say? Here’s my first impression…
First, and above all, this was a sober speech. It wasn’t a barn-stormer, it didn’t grip by the throat or tug the heart-strings. This was a serious analysis of why the Lib Dems have gone into government, and what the party wants to get out of it for the country. Nick was careful to go through the famous four pledges — fair taxes, a fair start for children, a fair …
You know what it’s like at airports. You’ve been round WH Smith and Sock Shop, you’ve had a coffee and an apple danish and all you can do is wait. It seems Nick has at least got a wireless signal as he’s dashed off a quick email to party members.
Imagine you’re asking a friend or neighbour to vote Liberal Democrat in the 2015 General Election.
Imagine how it will feel to say that in Government, the Liberal Democrats scrapped ID cards. To say we cut crime while stopping Labour’s mass incarceration of children. That finally we have a fair
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Hours after making his case to be Lib Dem party President, Jason Zadrozny has whipped his hat back out of the ring and thrown his political weight behind Susan Kramer.
Jason has sent out this email:
I wanted you to be one of the first people to know that I have today decided to withdraw from my campaign to become President of the Liberal Democrats and have thrown my weight behind efforts to elect Susan Kramer.
I think the role of Party President is vital for the future of our party. I firmly believe that whoever holds the position should consider the party’s
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Speaking at Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference today , Liberal Democrat Leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg will say:
Two and a half years ago, I stood in this very hall to make my first speech as Leader of our party. I said that the chance for change was within our reach, and we had to seize it. That chance came. Perhaps not quite in the way many of us could have expected.
But the chance came and you – we – responded with real courage and conviction.
Cynics expected us to back away. Instead, we confounded those who said …
Over at The Guardian’s Comment is Free website, Lib Dem MP and party presidential hopeful Tim Farron writes about his aim to inspire members to be proud of our party and work hard for elections and for the referendum. Here’s an excerpt:
When I read people telling us that this coalition government is “turning the clock back to the 1980s” because of the cuts, I know that this is witless rubbish – but I’ll be honest with you, those barbs really hurt me. I was brought up by a single mum, in significant poverty in Lancashire in Thatcher’s Britain. I went
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This is a time of great opportunity for our party. Whether through establishing the pupil premium for disadvantaged children, increasing tax relief for low income families, restoring vital civil liberties or putting the environment at the forefront of all we do, our values are at the heart of British government for the first time in generations. Britain is better off with Liberal Democrats in Cabinet.
A strong and unified party is needed to hold the Coalition Government to account, however, and division within the party will only make this job harder.
If elected as party President, I will use the role to …
At the start of conference, I blogged the ten issues that I thought would shape conference. Half-way through, how are things looking on the ten?
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Never say Mike Hancock doesn’t have a sense of timing… On the morning of Nick Clegg’s leader’s speech to the party conference, Mike has delivered what might be considered a stark warning:
I would be grateful if you could confirm in your speech on Monday that you will in the future bring any fundamental policy changes to the agreement without going through the triple lock democratic arrangements of the party. Or if that is not going to be the case that you will bring forward changes to the party constitution to change the triple lock. As I say that was not the case with the VAT rise and the Academies Bill. We are, I believe above all, a democratic party relying on the work and goodwill (more than the other parties) of our volunteers, activists and councillors. This cannot be a party of a dictatorship of 20 Lib Dem ministers.
However, before Labour activists get too excited that — like, erm, Charles Kennedy — Mike might be about to defect, he makes plain his continuing loyalty to the Lib Dems, and indeed to Nick:
Let me also be clear where I am as regards Labour. If Dennis Skinner can remain a member of Labour throughout the past twenty years of new Labour, I as a founding member of the SDP with over 25 years membership of the Lib Dems can certainly remain a member of the Lib Dems.
We should remind people of the actions of new Labour and the Labour ministers who are now going around trying to be their leader did. In fact there is such amnesia amongst them that I fear they have may have had a complete lobotomy! They supported things that you and I campaigned and voted against. Attacks on the poor through the abolition of the 10p tax rate. Attacks on students introducing tuition fees. Attacks on pensioners with the miserly 75p increase in the pension. Attacks on civil liberties with ID Cards and increasing the big brother state. The decimation of the local post office network. And just the down-right mean spirited with not allowing Ghurkhas to settle here. And you are rightly to be congratulated on the campaign that you ran on this.
I know that I and my constituents will not forget these things.
And Mike goes on to acknowledge the democratic strengths of the Lib Dems:
It probably remains one of your frustrations that leading the Lib Dems is a bit like herding cats! However it remains one of the strengths of this party that we can have a proper grown up discussion.
You can read Mike’s letter (PDF) in full here on his site, or below via Scribd:
I believe that the President of the Liberal Democrats should be elected.
On Thursday I declared my intention to stand as Party President. I believe it is so important for our Party to have a President who is not an MP.
In Nick Clegg we have an exceptional Leader who is at the heart of Government. In Simon Hughes we have an outstanding Deputy Leader representing our Parliamentary Party at the highest level.
What we need is a President who can represent the grass roots. The Party President is the highest representative of the grass roots and should be elected by the grass …
The coalition government is pledged to introducing a package of reforms to our electoral system, including extending it to cover the House of Lords. Quite what the impact of these changes will be is an issue addressed in the Litmus newspaper jointly produced by Lib Dem Voice, Left Foot Forward and Conservative Home. Here is my piece on the topic, and you can read the full newspaper, including the other pieces on this topic from Lord Norton and Will Straw, either via the hard copies in conference registration packs or online at www.litmustest.org.
The present House of Lords model gives a seat in Parliament for life without having to face any election. We need constitutional reform and an electoral system that reduces the number of safe seats, argues Dr Mark Pack.
Sky News’s Adam Boulton has an interesting take on this year’s Lib Dem conference:
… there is an overbearing sense of seriousness as the Lib Dems cogitate on the political hand dealt them after the last election. Far from glibly queuing to speak in debates, conference organisers report that party members are hanging back, wanting to listen to the explanations from the leadership.
It’s a perception that perhaps helps explain why there are relatively fewer requests to speak in debates, especially considering how much higher attendance at conference is this year. Most Lib Dem conference delegates choose only to speak in …
Over at the Guardian’s Comment is Free, former Lib Dem MP Dr Evan Harris develops some of the points he made at Sunday’s LibDemVoice.org fringe (which you can listen to here) — that while he’s broadly supportive of the Coalition he rejects entirely Nick’s claim that the austerity cuts can be “fair”. Here’s an excerpt:
The progressive wing of the Lib Dems broadly supports the coalition and the agreement underpinning it … The party voted to endorse the coalition agreement, but we did not vote to endorse the implementation of illiberal or unfair government policies that have emerged since. The
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A combination of meetings and media mean I cannot make it into the hall later this morning for the debate on the party’s Facing the Future policy consultation (pdf copy of document here). It is a document setting out the broad questions (sixty-two in all, though Q59 bears a striking resemblance to Q53) intended to shape the party’s future policy development. Had I been able to make it, this is the necessarily brief speech I would have wanted to give about the last three in the document, on international affairs.
There are two near certainties about any broad policy review …
With the success of the most recent Blog of the Year still ringing in our ears, I thought I’d dig through the archive and bring you the tapes from the previous incarnations of the event.
Marvel at our clipped accents and the comical costumes we wore as we take this trip down memory lane.
Firstly, Jonathan Calder unearthed some footage of the very first BOTY ceremony with guest speaker Alex Wilcock. This was way back in 2006 when the world was as a younger, kinder place.
I’m not aware of any recordings from 2007 – if you can help fill the …
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 187th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (12th – 18th September, 2010), together with a hand-picked quintet, normally courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.
Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox – just click here – ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.
As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:
Lib Dem Voice co-editor Mark Pack was interviewed for BBC One’s The Politics Show (East) on what the mood of conference was likely to be. Here’s the write-up on the Beeb’s site:
The Lib Dem Party is in a pensive mood, we are told, by Mark Pack from Lib Dem Voice, a website for grassroots supporters. Although Lib Dems are pleased to be in government, they are not as upbeat as you may imagine at their first Conference in power for several generations.
There is a balance to be struck between finally pushing through Lib Dem policies and having to support a
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This lunchtime, Lib Dem conference representatives gathered in the staggeringly poorly signposted Hall 1B to hear a stellar lineup of Susan Kramer, Evan Harris and interloper Will Straw from Left Foot Forward hold forth on the subject of “Fairer? For whom?” – excellently wrangled by the chairman, our own Stephen Tall.
As with all Lib Dem Voice fringe events, we were there with …
Former Conservative MP Angela Browning, former Liberal Democrat MP David Howarth, former SNP MP and MSP George Reid and ex-Labour HQ staffer Roy Kennedy have been appointed as Electoral Commissioners by Parliament (see news release here).
These are the first ‘political’ appointments since the laws governing the Electoral Commission were changed to permit people with recent political activity to become commissioners.
Roy Kennedy’s appointment may cause some comment as he was the Labour Party’s Director of Compliance since 2005, a period during which there were many controversies over the Labour Party’s approach to finances. For example, there were no prosecutions over …
Below is a sound recording of the Nick Clegg Q&A that just happened.
We also live-tweeted it – and the tweets will not be displaced from our feed for a few hours yet.
And m’colleague Stephen Tall was live-blogging the session, and his words can be found here.
Over at the New Statesman, former Lib Dem director of communciations, Olly Grender, ponders the real question dominating the Liverpool conference. Not ‘Do you support the Coalition?’ (the vast majority of members do), but rather the key dilemma: “How much do we celebrate our separateness in government versus how much do we argue that this is a fully integrated team?”
Here’s her conclusion:
So what is the correct answer? Celebrate the differences? Or talk about the team? I suspect that the holy Grail of “being distinctive” at a national rather than local level is far less realisable than people think. In
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Sunday lunchtime saw Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander address Liberal Democrat conference. The packed nature of the hall, the fullest it had been so far save for the rally on Saturday night, reflects both the importance of Danny’s role and the interest from many members in hearing direct from him.
What’s really happening with the cuts? How much is fairness figuring? And can Danny present the message successfully? Not being David Laws is a burden that has hung over his early days in office and this speech was his opportunity to establish himself in party eyes as his own …
Nick Clegg has just taken to the podium to take questions from the floor…
2.52 pm… First up is Linda Jack, who asks, “Can I still trust you with my party?”
Yes of course you can, says Nick. We’ve restored the pensions link, taken 900,000 people out of income tax, imposed a bank levy, addressed capital gains, etc. “There’s nothing fair or socially just about asking our chldren or grandchildren to pay off our debts.”
2.55 pm… Linda comes back: I don’t see enough to deal with young people or poverty or inequality in the Coalition agreement. You can share power with others, …
Over at The Independent today, Lib Dem secretary of state for business, skills and innovation Vince Cable declares unequivocally that he will be trying to convince the Liberal Democrat conference that the Coalition’s austerity programme of cuts are right and will be fair. Here’s an excerpt:
What will matter for my party and the country at large is whether fiscal discipline and wider reforms are carried through in a spirit of fairness. Within a few months, some key steps have been taken in that direction. The first has been to lift income tax thresholds, taking low earners out of tax and
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With Liberal Democrats in government, and a massive increase in the number of journalists coming to Liberal Democrat conference this year, you might think the press has a different story to tell this year.
In some ways they do. My first conference (as a teenager…) was the Llandudno conference that saw the launch of the Alliance. David Steel made his famous speech about “preparing for government” – and it has been used to mock at every conference since. Until now that is.
Some of the papers this time are looking at how much of our manifesto is being implemented. That is definitely …
At Lib Dem conference and got no time to read all the papers? Missing Lib Dem conference, and wanting to catch up on all the fun as refracted through the lens of the news media? Then look no further… (Warning: this post contains traces of Daily Mail. Avert your eyes if easily offended.)
Genuinely interesting article, well worth reading in full, but here’s an interesting snippet:
The Lib Dems’ private polling shows a peeling-off of the idealist Left, but growing support from a group lumped together as “working
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