Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 489th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the five most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (17-23 September, 2017), together with a hand-picked seven 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:

1. We lost. We’ll keep fighting by Andrew Hickey on Head of State.
Not the EU Referendum, but the Conference debate on Europe. Let’s hope his pessimism is misplaced.

2. Two Liberal Democrat gains from Labour in the Midlands by Mark Pack on Mark Pack.
And in my old stomping ground in the East Midlands too.

3. Have the Lib Dems reached a Battle of the Marne moment? by Matthew Green on Thinking Liberal.
“And yet Vince Cable persists in treating his audiences as if they are intelligent human beings..” A candid appraisal of the party’s fortunes.

4. Not the Leader’s Speech – UPDATED by Jennie Rigg on I spend ages hanging around the Rue Morgue in a Gorilla suit and what do I get?
Made me laugh again reading it. Vince goes where Clegg and Farron didn’t dare to go.

5. Dillie Keane of Fascinating Aida sings her anti Brexit song at Lib Dem Glee Club by Iain Brodie-Browne on Birkdale Focus.
And there is even video. Those of us who walked in at the word that rhymes with fronts will be eternally grateful.

And now to the seven blog-posts that come highly recommended, regardless of the number of Aggregator click-throughs they attracted. To nominate a Lib Dem blog article published in the past seven days – your own, or someone else’s, all you have to do is drop a line to [email protected]. You can also contact us via Twitter, where we’re @libdemvoice

6. You can, apparently, never start too early by Mark Valladares on Liberal Bureaucracy.
I hope Mark is dusting off his flak jacket. Selections don’t always bring out the best in Liberal Democrats.

7. Liberals have no defining philosophy? Woah! by Michael Meadowcroft on Peer Wrigley’s Keynsian Liberal

Michael Meadowcroft challenges Matthew Parris’s assertion that we have no defining philosophy.

For instance, the Liberal Democrats were the only party to have a 100% attendance of its MPs to vote against the Iraq invasion, not because of any pragmatic opinion on weapons of mass destruction but because the party rightly believed that it was against international law, and that was enough; we have been in favour of an united Europe since 1955 because the party is internationalist and sceptical about the relevance of borders; we are in favour of devolution because we are aware of the dangers of centralism and its predilection towards authoritarian government; we are in favour of land value taxation because we believe that it is immoral to exploit land ownership rather than looking towards the common good; and we favour co-operatives in industry because we believe that to set management against labour is counterproductive and deleterious to productivity and is unnecessarily divisive..

8. Yesterday at #ldconf. What I did and how I voted by Jennie Rigg on I spend ages hanging around the Rue Morgue in a Gorilla suit and what do I get?.
The first of several informative and amusing posts from Jennie about Conference.

9. Vince Cable needs to learn a lesson from the Leave campaign by Ben Rathe on The Gripes of Rathe.
The tuition fees thing needs to be handled carefully.

10. Sal Brinton’s speech was a rouser by Jane Chelliah on Feminist Mama.
A good analysis of Sal’s speech to Conference.

11. Emotions in politics and Brexit by Louise Ankers on From one of the Jilted Generation.
Does our self image influence our vote?.

12. Off the fence. Bi Vis in the village by Jen Yockney on Either/And.
A bit of very welcome insurgency ahead of Bi Visibility Day yesterday.

And that’s it for another week. Happy blogging ‘n’ reading ‘n’ nominating.

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* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings