For the first time since Spring 2019, the Scottish Liberal Democrats had a proper Conference where we all met in person. The snap General Election put paid to our Autumn Conference that year.
It was indescribably brilliant to see everyone. I feel a million years older than I did in 2019, but nobody else seems to have aged at all.
The party was in incredibly good form. The Council elections saw us gain twenty councillors, with 255,000 new people represented by a Liberal Democrat. On Friday, four of them, Sally Pattle, our first ever councillor in West Lothian, Aude Boubaker-Calder from Fife, Desmond Bouse from Aberdeen and the irrepressible Jack Caldwell from Edinburgh Leith Walk gave presentations about their first five months in the job.
Here are some of the highlights from BBC’s Reporting Scotland
Alex Cole-Hamilton, in his first Conference as leader, pushed his plan to get us 150 councillors in the 2027 council elections, 150 rising, in a take on Liam Neeson’s speech from the film taken:
I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. I will look for you, I will find you and I will make you into a Liberal Democrat Councillor.
The first debate was on giving children in poverty a fairer start in life and eradicate the feeling of exclusion many feel. The motion included a wide range of measures from providing study space in libraries to a voucher scheme to give them access to the extra curricular activities which build skills and improve wellbeing. Usually the chairs of the early debates frantically descend on the cafe and exhibition to try to dragoon people into speaking in them, but this time they were all over-subscribed.
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