Last weekend, Young Liberals held our first Conference of 2025! 

Unfortunately, due to issues with our venue, we had to cancel our plans to head to Cardiff for our first Welsh Conference in seven years, instead moving online. This was arranged very quickly, and I’m so grateful to the team of volunteers – including our Events Officer, Lucas and Policy Officer, Ulysse – who agreed to spend their weekend at LDHQ to help run the tech.

Policy

It wouldn’t be a Lib Dem Conference without policy and constitutional wonkery, and there was plenty of both this time. 

We called out Labour’s unfair bus tax, calling for fairer fares, and an integrated ticketing network for bus transport in England. YL also supported a motion looking at how to bring disused railway lines back into use to boost connectivity across the country and improve access to electric vehicles such as mopeds to bring down costs.

We also called for the UK Government to recognise Somaliland in light of the ongoing crises faced by civilians there, and their desire to adopt a new constitution and align with the Commonwealth.

You can check out all YL policies here.

Training

For the first time at a YL Conference, we ran a number of parallel fringe and training sessions across the weekend. This more than doubled the time available for membership development and training and meant we could run sessions on a variety of campaigning, diversity, and party issues.

This included training on tackling misogyny, developing local branches, and developing your local membership. We’re really grateful to our friends and colleagues at ALDC for agreeing to deliver a number of their fantastic sessions for our members at short notice. 

Special Guests

The joy of an online Conference is being able to bring together people from all parts of the country, which included seven fantastic Lib Dem Parliamentarians!

Thank you to Jess Brown-Fuller MP, Steff Aquarone MP, Sarah Olney MP, Marie Goldman MP, James MacCleary MP, Joshua Reynolds MP and Party President Lord Pack for taking the time to talk to us!

We had a great range of questions from getting into politics, finding your feet in Westminster, campaigns and issues that matter to each MP, and a great discussion on the internal elections to encourage more young people to stand!

What’s next?

We’re really excited to descend on Harrogate for Federal Conference from 21-23 March, with a range of training sessions for members to engage young people in their community, recruit more young people, and use social media effectively. 

We’ll also be at the exhibition all weekend, so drop by our stand to hear about our work and find out more about how you can get involved and make a difference.

(And keep an eye out for an announcement about our Summer Conference on social media soon…)

If you’re not a Young Liberal but would love to support our work, why not consider signing up as an inaugural Friend of Young Liberals? This is the go-to network for supporters who don’t qualify for membership but still want to stay involved and make an impact.

No matter your age, background, or level of involvement in the party, join our exclusive mailing list to be the first to hear about YL campaigns, training resources, and opportunities to support young members.

* Harvey Jones is Chair of the Young Liberals