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Liberal Democrats Conference: The end of politics as we know it?

22 September 2009

More than a 100 delegates packed into a conference room at the High Cliff Hotel in Bournemouth for ippr’s fringe event at the Liberal Democrat conference on Tuesday 22nd September.

The speakers at the event were

  • Baroness Shirley Williams
  • Sir Menzies Campbell MP 
  • Rt Hon Charles Clarke MP 
  • Stephen Tall, Liberal Democrat Voice 
  • Carey Oppenheim, ippr (Chair)

Introducing the event Carey Oppenheim explained that ippr was doing things differently at the conferences this year, with the aim of trying to widen the circle of people who could engage in the discussions. To that end, ippr had joined with the blog site, Liberal Democrat Voice, to survey Lib Dem supporters about the issues that most concerned them. 234 had taken part and this group formed a ‘fifth panelist’ – whose views would be included in the fringe event discussion. View results of the survey here.

ippr was also doing a live twitter feed of the fringe and asking people to twitter back with questions for the panel.

There was a lively discussion on the scale and nature of the political crisis in the UK – and how it impacted on the Liberal Democrats and progressives more generally.  Shirley Williams said political reform needed to go much further, in particular that the power of the Commons – which was now ‘feeble’ – needed to be strengthened . Charles Clarke spoke of the need for greater cooperation between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, and Ming Campbell agreed that if the Tories won the election, such cooperation would not be “a matter of choice but of compulsion”. 

Stephen Tall, from Liberal Democrat Voice, was critical of the party leadership for not putting across a clear enough case for support at the party conference.

If you would like to hear the event, audio recordings are availiable do download:

The Future of Politics Part 1 (.mp3)
The Future of Politics Part 2  (.mp3)

To download, right-click the above links and select 'Save Target As...'.

Contact

events - events@ippr.org

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