Dispatches from a foreign country: Inside Lib Dem conference

By Lewis Goodall

They’re looking at me, they’re all looking at me. To be clear, I don’t tell myself this regularly and besides, I chastise myself, it’s nonsense. Stop being so paranoid. Then a steward asks me if I’m ok, I assure him I’m not hyperventilating and am in fact perfectly okay and more importantly, I’m in. Thankfully (yet worryingly) the Lib Dems think I’m one of them.

For, this week, I have been seeing life from the other side. An anthropological voyage to vistas plastered not with the Labour rose but with the Lib Dem dove (pigeon? cuckoo? dodo?) If the past is a foreign country, then a Lib Dem conference must be, well like, Wales. I have more than a nagging feeling they know, but apart from a few unhelpful stewards (generally unhelpful, to party members and media alike) I glide (nervously stumble) from fringe to fringe at my leisure. I’ve come to sniff around, like the other 1300 members of the media, trying to find a story- any story. What’s that sir? You say you hate Nick Clegg? Oh, you met Nick Clegg, right, never mind, see you. Madam – you detest the coalition and all who sail in her? Madam? You hate Dave Cameron’s comb-over? Madam?!

The truth is, there aren’t that many stories of ‘fights’, ‘break-ups’ and ‘marital feuds’ to be had. Alas yes, I’m afraid to report that we’re going to have to drop the tried and trusted metaphors about marriage tiffs, the in-laws falling out etc blah etc. The media line looking for any sign of grass roots dissent is a tiresome game which does absolutely nothing to illuminate anyone at all. Well, at least not this year. Except for one meeting I go to where Simon Hughes decides all advocates of First Past The Post are in fact ‘Neanderthals.’ Presumably including most of the, erm, Cabinet.

But, Lib Dem doubts about the PM’s status as a fully paid up homo sapien aside, we’re going to have to accept that for the time being, most Lib Dems aren’t budging. There’s fraying around the edges but the fact is the prevailing feeling in Liverpool this week has been one of a sort of dazed euphoria, rather than anger. ‘We have ministers? Like, with cars? And red boxes? Cool.’ For the grassroots, bluntly, it’s the morning after the night before. They’ve got into bed with someone they’re really not sure they should have – but, the important thing is that they have finally lost their virginity, thus feeling pretty chuffed with themselves. It’ll only be years later, whilst in intense therapy that they finally realise that giving in early was a really bad idea and they should have really waited for the right person to come along after all.

In the interim though, there’s certainly plenty of time for activists to ponder, pontificate and occasionally lie to themselves. This is the really interesting thing to come out of the conference. After convincing a wonderful councillor for Lambeth I was a fellow coalition padawan, he happily regaled me with a theory as to how the party would win an outright majority next time (with or without AV) because both soft Tories and soft Labour voters would gravitate to the party now they saw they could ‘govern’ effectively. Three or four followers agreed enthusiastically.

Curiouser and curiouser. Short of these voters he referred to being ‘soft’ in the head rather than political affiliation it’s difficult to see how the theory stacks up. Underneath the thrill and majesty of the red boxes lies an unease highlighted by the sort of conversation had above. With collective euphoria comes collective denial. This was one of at least half a dozen similar theories I came across in the few days I was in town. Whatever the rights or wrongs of the coalition deal or Clegg’s motives, the unease around maintaining a Liberal Democrat identity manifests itself in peculiar ways. For now, the doubts, the disagreements, the cracks are plastered over by ministerial gloss, the crack of the Cable ‘comrade’ whip against the perils of international capital and the innumerable off the wall theories about how the party will triumph in 2015. Whether this glue holds this time next year is anyone’s guess-but one thing’s for sure, novelties, particularly political ones, tend to wear off pretty fast. For now though, basking in this political post-coital glow, is largely enough.