The Spectator’s Notes | 25 September 2010

On Monday, I tracked down my father to his hotel in Liverpool. He was there for the Liberal Democrat conference.

On Monday, I tracked down my father to his hotel in Liverpool. He was there for the Liberal Democrat conference. He has attended every single one of these since 1953, when he represented the Cambridge University Liberal Club and made a fiery speech about how the Liberals should be more enthusiastic about Europe. So he has spent an entire year of his life at these occasions — surely a record. In the year of his first conference, which was held at Ilfracombe, the party stood at 3 per cent in the opinion polls. Its leader was Clement Davies who, even at the time, no one had heard of. ‘We did nearly die,’ my father said. Today, the party is in government. Even my father, who is 79, is too young to remember it holding power in peacetime.