Sunday 15 September 2013

#ldconf Day 1

So, after staying in the conference bar rather later than intended, I'm hastily typing this before getting ready to head out to the SECC for day 2 of this years Liberal Democrat Conference. Or rather, Conferences.

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours in the Scottish Liberal Democrat conference - which was being run concurrently with the start of Federal Conference in order to take advantage of so many people already coming to the Glasgow. It was nice to see the State Party at work - and the highlight was a speech from George Lyon MEP.

Most of the rest of my day was spent in various training sessions with the lunchtime CentreForum fringe on Britain in Europe providing food for thought. The resounding message from that was best summarised by Martin Horwood. With respect to any referendum, "We should be the party of 'in'".

Conference rally - themed around our "A Million Jobs" campaign - was compered by the inimitable Alistair Carmichael with contributions from Paddy Ashdown (always good value, even when you've heard much of it before), Katy Gordon (one of our Scottish PPCs), Kirsty Williams (who almost made me feel sorry for Lembit) and, of course, Nick himself. For me the most striking thing was how Rally had embraced both State Parties - a good reminder of our own federal structure and federal vision for the UK.

After rally, I went to the joint CentreForum and Social Liberal Forum fringe on green investment policy - here are my tweets:




Andrew

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