Nick Clegg is, on balance, starting his party’s conference in a reasonably strong position. There has been an amusing bitch fight today between party grandees, with Paddy Ashdown saying that ‘Matthew [Oakeshott]’s self-appointed position as a sort of vicar on earth for Vince does neither of them any good’, but largely Clegg can expect to at least arrive in Glasgow without any suggestions that this is a crucial conference for him.
There will, however, be some bumps in the road over the next couple of days. The Lib Dem leader isn’t facing a leadership challenge, but he still has challenges to his authority as leader to weather: and they come from his own party. Activists are a bit grumpy at the moment for a number of reasons. The first is that some of them suspect the Lib Dem leader is patronising them rather by telling them to grow up. The party’s spring conference in Brighton had a theme running through it of Clegg telling his activists that they couldn’t just be a party of protest any more, as many of them protested loudly about the Justice and Security Bill.
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