Tag Archives: 2024 autumn scottish conference

Caron Lindsay

New ideas at Scottish Conference

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 20th November 2024 - 8:28 am

Scottish Conference took place in Perth on Saturday. The 300 year old Salutation Inn near the river has been putting up weary travellers for over 300 years and has been holding Lib Dem events for just about as long. I don’t think the decor has changed in all the time I’ve been going there since we moved back to Scotland in 2000 so it’s a wee bit dated but it serves decent pub food and the staff can’t do enough to help you. And the big win for me is that they make the toast for you at breakfast. You don’t have to stand for ages and watch helplessly as the slow moving toast machine burns your bread.

I shall cover the controversial debates – and there were a couple where we disagreed really well with excellent speeches – in another post, but I wanted to tell you about an innovation or two.

You know how quite often we get motherhood and apple pie motions which state the obvious Lib Dem position on an issue and nobody is ever going to vote against? Rather than give them half an hour’s debate, they have a party spokesperson present them in a report, speak for five minutes or so about the ideas and then have Conference vote. Housing spokesperson Paul McGarry, also the Conference Convener, was the first to trial this. His policy proposals were:

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The Voice

WATCH: Alex Cole-Hamilton’s speech to Scottish Conference

By The Voice | Mon 18th November 2024 - 9:25 am

Scottish Lib Dems met in Perth for their Autumn Conference on Saturday. Alex Cole-Hamilton was in buoyant mood after a stonking by-election win on Thursday in Colinton/Fairmilehead in Edinburgh. We took the seat of new Labour MP Scott Arthur, going from fourth to first place. Winning 36% of the vote was incredible. Alex also had another by-election win in Perthshire itself to gloat about. A few weeks ago, Alan Watt had a similar meteoric rise after a superb and intense campaign.

We will have more about the Conference later. There were some brilliant and highly controversial debates, possibly some of the best I have heard in my long history of attending Conference.

But first, here is Alex’s speech. He spoke in the same room where David Bowie once performed.

The audio is at best not great, so you will need the text below.

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