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<\/p>\nPoor Sir Edward Davey.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Sunday the Lib Dem leader fell out of a kayak and was given a mouthful of English Channel. Yesterday he received a second dose of salts when the Young Liberals forced him to swallow new-homes targets. They’d leave swathes of the southern shires looking like a Barratt housing estate and could send middle-class voters screaming back to the Conservatives.<\/p>\n
This is the first Lib Dem conference since Covid. I had forgotten what autumnal events they are, particularly in the morning before the thrusters (comparative term) rise from their pits.<\/p>\n
The first two hours were so melancholy, there was a blast of J. Keats vibes, this being the season of mellow, misty-eyed relics and fruitlessness. Various ancients hobbled to the lectern. It was like being at a hip clinic. But things did liven up in the afternoon.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Poor Sir Edward Davey. On Sunday the Lib Dem leader fell out of a kayak and was given a mouthful of English Channel<\/p>\n
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Yesterday he received a second dose of salts when the Young Liberals forced him to swallow new-homes targets<\/p>\n
Lib Dem conferences suit those of us who enjoy watching non-league football. Not many souls turn up but those who do are ardent about wearing their team colours and remembering distant cup runs.<\/p>\n
One chap meandered on about ‘that great Liberal landslide of 1906’. The 1942 Beveridge report and 1945 election were mentioned as if everyone remembered them. Welcome to the Bournemouth centre’s Zimmer Suite.<\/p>\n
Someone complained about disability access at railway stations but it wasn’t great here, either. Baroness Brinton uses an electric wheelchair. Invited to make a speech, she had to whizz at top speed side-stage right and, after an impressive stop and screech of tyre rubber, disappear behind a poky curtain from where clanking machinery suggested great palaver before she zoomed on stage to make a fluent contribution. Sal Brinton is the Lib Dems’ Lewis Hamilton. Great lady.<\/p>\n
You might not want to join the Libs but they’re a likeably eccentric crew. Some old chaps were in shorts, flashing bronzed, knobbled knees. Quite a few male ponytails included one worn with a Man From Del Monte tropical suit. We had an artist’s smock with a goatee. We had an old dear who looked like WH Auden. Apparently one former West Country MP, previously male, was going around the place in a skirt.<\/p>\n
Fellow near me dabbed at a leaky eye. Simon Hughes, another ex-MP, sashayed past with a picnic bag. I had a chat with Ming Campbell, whose wife Elspeth died recently. What a belter she was. ‘More interested in politics than I ever was,’ admitted Ming with affection.<\/p>\n
Back on stage a speaker cried that ‘the horse of opportunity is running with us’. The Devonian gent directly in front of me started doing a Lester Piggott impression, as if galloping in his seat.<\/p>\n
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This is the first Lib Dem conference since Covid. I had forgotten what autumnal events they are, particularly in the morning before the thrusters (comparative term) rise from their pits<\/p>\n
During the farming debate we were told to eat more fibre and maintain ‘a healthy gut’ by ingesting ’30 different sorts of plant material in a week’. Bang goes the ozone layer.<\/p>\n
Talking of wind, a tremendously boring vegan in a bank-manager suit gassed on about ‘animals who pay the ultimate sacrifice to satiate our appetites’. The session’s moderator cut off his microphone. Culled him. A Welsh hill farmer said Lib Dems were ‘as hardy as any Black Mountain flock’. Most political crowds would be insulted to be called sheep but this lot took it rather well.<\/p>\n
Lunch lasted two-and-a-half hours, plenty of time for some Egyptian PT back at the hotel. Then drama: The housing debate. ‘Let’s not give mixed signals,’ urged another ex-MP \u2013 the place is full of them.<\/p>\n
Hang on. The Lib Dems have always sent out mixed, if not downright hypocritical signals. This party is a living paradox, happy to embrace Nimbyism alongside HS2 zealotry, Euroscepticism and Remoanerism, finger-wagging and libertarianism, depending on what voters want to hear.<\/p>\n
Tim Farron, once their caudillo, tore into the Young Liberals for wanting housing targets. He called them Thatcherites. They didn’t like that. ‘That speech was below you, Tim,’ intoned the party’s ever-so-slightly sanctimonious candidate for the London mayoralty. Below Tim? But he’s barely 5ft tall!<\/p>\n