West Midlands Conference

On Saturday I attended the West Midlands Regional Conference in Solihull. I ran two training sessions for local party officers and also heard speeches from Baroness Ros Scott and Simon Hughes.

Ros spoke on her recent travels, Dave Hodgson's stunning win in the Bedford Mayoral by-election and our chances in the upcoming general election, particularly where we are up against the Conservatives. Not everyone in the room agreed with Simon's rather utopian view of energy policy but his speech in general was well received.

I'd like to see a wider variety of training and policy discussions at future regional conferences in order to attract more people.

Liberal Democrat Conference

I’m just back from Liberal Democrat Conference in Bournemouth, refreshed and motivated. Contrary to many media reports (Andrew Neil in particular), the atmosphere was overwhelmingly positive.

What the media always neglect to mention is our members decide on policy at Conference, by debating and voting. This debate can often come across, or be reported as, negative feeling or even as splits within the party. This is healthy debate – and it’s about time the media woke up to this and gave us a fair hearing.

I ran several training sessions so didn’t get to as many debates as possible, but I did catch some of the headline “Fresh Start For Britain” debate and vote. To some this may have seemed irrelevant high-level nonsense, but for me the policy paper laid out our principles and laid the foundations for our general election manifesto. An amendment to clarify that no existing policy commitment has been dropped as party of this policy (for instance tuition fees!) was passed by Conference.

I managed to catch up with several people and meet a whole load more, including some from urban areas run very successfully by Liberal Democrat councils.

March 2010 sees the Liberal Democrat spring conference arrive in our very own Birmingham – and not before time! Marketing Birmingham hosted an impressive stand (pictured) at the Conference exhibition hall plugging the city and the Birmingham Convention Bureau has already launched a website promoting the conference. Roll on March!