Liberal democrats

Now the Lib Dems have finally reached the end of their autumn conference in Brighton, here’s a summary of the most important points from the week: 1. The Lib Dems will struggle to work with Ed Balls in the event of a possible Lib-Lab pact in 2015. Nick Clegg made this clear in his speech this afternoon, repeatedly attacking the shadow chancellor by name. 2. Nick Clegg wants to pull his party with him into demonstrating that coalition works. The proalition-style announcement in his speech about catch-up tuition for school children was a demonstration of how two-party government can be very effective, while his tough talking on the party no

Like the whole of this Liberal Democrat conference, Nick Clegg’s speech to delegates did the job, but didn’t exactly lift the roof from the Brighton Centre. Those watching were happy: they applauded warmly and laughed at all the jokes (which hasn’t always been the case this week in Brighton), and they were utterly overjoyed when the Deputy Prime Minister announced that Paddy Ashdown will chair the party’s 2015 general election team. He told members to ‘go for it’, and raised two laughs when he quoted Jo Grimond, saying that he could ‘see generations of Liberal marching towards the sound of gunfire. And yes, I see them going back to their

Nick Clegg’s speech this afternoon will include a big push for his party to accept that they are a party of government, not of protest and that coalition is a good thing. He made some choice comments to that effect in an interview with regional journalists, which the Birmingham Post has covered. Clegg said: ‘There are a group of people – they are perfectly free to do this in a free democratic society – who like to throw stones from the sidelines, who like to be associated with causes where there’s never a difficult decision needs to be made, who don’t actually like parties being in government. And who always

Polls don’t and shouldn’t matter to Liberal Democrats, so says Paddy Ashdown. The ex-Lib Dem leader managed to whip activists into a yellow-tinged frenzy this afternoon at a packed out polling discussion. Ashdown refuted that his party has been smothered with an ‘atmosphere of political gloom’ and ordered the rank and file to ‘ignore these polls and get on with the politics’. However, an overview of Times/Populus polling on voting intentions presented at the discussion highlighted how the Lib Dems’ fortunes have changed since the election: Ashdown insisted this is nothing to worry about, citing Margaret Thatcher as an occasionally unpopular leader who was still able to win elections. With

Never a man to avoid confrontation, Vince Cable decided to tackle gossip about his conversations with Labour head on when he appeared on stage at the Lib Dem conference this lunchtime. He has ‘excellent communications with politicians across the spectrum’, he joked, then reached into his pocket for his phone, joking that he had a message from Ed. He followed the same pattern as Tim Farron in criticising Labour’s record in government, just to make clear that the Lib Dems are fervently independent, rather than hankering after partnership with one party or another. But it was interesting that the majority of mentions for other parties in the Business Secretary’s speech

Danny Alexander had reason to be very chuffed this morning when his party gave its overwhelming support to a motion he tabled, praising George Osborne’s Plan A for the economy. The motion also welcomed the recent infrastructure announcements from the government, underlining that these investments were possible as a result of the government’s ‘hard-won fiscal credibility’. This motion was about reminding Liberal Democrats of the cause the coalition had united over, and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury took care to present Labour as the villains in this, insisting that ‘Labour is wrong on the economy’. But that didn’t stop some activists pushing a rival amendment — which was overwhelmingly