The Lib Dems are the winners of conference season (and they haven’t even held theirs yet)
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_2_Oct_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman review the conference season” startat=604] Listen [/audioplayer]Normally, the last party conference season before an election clarifies matters. But, so far, this one has not. Instead, it has merely compounded the factors that make the next election so difficult to call. The reason why people are reluctant to predict a Labour majority despite its current poll lead and the structural factors in its favour, is that it trails on the economy and leadership by margins that would usually be considered terminal. Its conference didn’t address these problems successfully. Indeed, with Ed Miliband forgetting the section on the deficit it has compounded them. But the
