Last night’s Conference rally was one of the highlights so far. As party members gathered in a hotel suite, four fantastic Welsh Lib Dem women, two current AMs, two target seat candidates helped set out the Liberal Democrat vision and values ahead of May’s election. Eluned Parrott proved to be a very funny chair of the event, with a little anecdote about each of the speakers. Veronica German used to work as a tester for Cadbury’s. Nice work if you can get it. Her great Uncle was an ice cream pioneer as the original Mr Whippy. Liz Evans is known as the Queen in some circles because of her love of corgis and has a great hat collection. And Kirsty, she told us, was named  the 47th coolest woman in Wales. A massive theme of this whole conference has been about giving communities control over their own destiny and Liz Evans highlighted that this is instinctive to us.

Strong, thriving communities are vital to Liberal Democrats. We get localism says Evans. #WLDConf

— Caron Lindsay (@caronmlindsay) February 5, 2016

Local people are best off when they have power and Lib Dems are in power says Evans. #wldconf — Caron Lindsay (@caronmlindsay) February 5, 2016

Another big theme of the weekend has been public services and how they are being pretty atrociously run in Wales. Veronica German talked about the Royal Gwent Hospital in South Wales which has been promised a desperately needed critical care unit. How far have Labour got with delivering it? A fence. And a wee bit of grass. She also tackled UKIP head on. She said that Welsh people may not be too impressed that they are sending Neil Hamilton and Mark Reckless to stand in two UKIP targets. They are standing for the Assembly although their policy is to abolish it and have Welsh affairs decided by a Grand Committee of Welsh MPs. I saw quite a lot of parallels with Scottish politics – failing public services, a nationalist party who will blame Westminster for everything and want to centralise everything that sits still for more than five seconds and the issue of the Severn Bridge takes me back 10 years to the Dunfermline by-election, almost exactly 10 years ago. Then, Willie Rennie fought on a platform of getting rid of the tolls on the Forth Road Bridge, which the Lib Dems helped to deliver. Listening to people talk abut the economic impact of keeping a £13 for commercial vehicles on a main route from England to Wales, you wonder how people ever thought it was a good idea. It’s bound to inhibit opportunity and economic growth on both sides. The Liberal Democrats have long championed the removal of the tolls. When it was Kirsty’s turn to speak, she talked quite emotionally about what her community mean to her and how inspired she had been by the way they worked together to save local venues or public toilets or schools. She wants to see that community spirit renewed and inspired across Wales:

Every single community in Wales has that ability, local people have those instincts in them. But it is our role, as believers of localism, as local champions, as liberals, to enable communities to act in this way. To bring out the best of our neighbourhoods. Because a nation is only as good as the sum of its parts. And if we want Wales to be the best it can be, then we will only achieve it by enabling our communities to be the best they can be too.

The third theme that has been repeated over the weekend is a plea for all Welsh Liberal Democrats to get out there and work their backsides off for the election.

If that’s what you want for your community, if that’s what you want for your nation, I need you to go out there and work for it. Knock those doors. Deliver those leaflets. Pound those pavements Work until everyone in your community knows that the Welsh Liberal Democrats are standing up for them. If you do that, we truly will win for our communities, and deliver change for a better Wales.

Tim Farron continued with the same idea today. Where we work we win works again, he said. Let’s make sure we put that to the test over the weeks and months to come.

More nurses to save lives

.@kirsty_williams talking about her nurses campaign, motivated by seeing an over-stretched admissions unit #wldconf pic.twitter.com/1hvuU95XCh

— Caron Lindsay (@caronmlindsay) February 5, 2016

Immediately after the rally, there was a pre-dinner drinks reception held by the Royal College of Nurses. Kirsty talked about her motivation for fighting for safe nurse staffing levels. She had taken a family member to an assessment unit and found the nurses under intense pressure, often working long beyond their shift end because they didn’t want to leave their patients. Who, she said, would be responsible if one of those tired nurses made a mistake. It was unlikely to be the managers who had put them in that position. The speaker from the Royal College of Nursing said that there was clear evidence to show that safer staffing levels saved lives. One thing happened at that reception that amused me. I was talking with some friends, inadvertently in front of the banner where Kirsty was planning to make her speech. I have known leaders (none of the current incumbents, I hasten to add) who might have got their staff to move the plebs on. She didn’t. She came up like a normal human being and asked us politely to move, which of course we did. It was an evening full of warmth and determination and clarity of purpose, setting out themes that would develop across the weekend.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social