Press Releases

ippr at the conferences 2009

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09 October 2009

Nearly a thousand delegates packed the three events that ippr held at the Liberal Democrat, Labour and Conservative conferences to discuss the future of politics at this time of radical change and upheaval.

Speakers at the fringe meetings included the Foreign Secretary David Miliband MP, former Labour Cabinet Ministers Charles Clarke MP and David Blunkett MP, Conservative Front Benchers Francis Maude MP and David Willets MP, and former Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Menzies Campbell MP.

conferece09

Among the issues discussed were:

Is the Liberal Democrat agenda best advanced by the party working more closely with Labour or the Conservatives?
What is the record of the Labour government during 12 years in power?
Can the Labour renew itself – and can it do it time to win the next election?
What is the future shape of progressive politics if, as seems likely, the Conservatives win the next election?
What should be a policy priorities for an incoming Conservative government given the scale of the economic crisis?

Rethinking the Fringe

We also want to open up the closed circles of the conferences, so we forged partnerships with leading blogging sites. Editors of those sites joined our panels and readers from the sites were surveyed for their views on the main issues of the day. Results from the three surveys can be found via the below links.

We also used twittered highlights live from the fringe events, giving people beyond the hall the chance to feed into their views to the panelists. Follow us on twitter at http://twitter.com/ippr.

Event Recordings

Liberal Democrats - The Future of Politics Part 1 (.mp3)
Liberal Democrats - The Future of Politics Part 2 (.mp3)

Labour 2009 event part 1 (.mp3)
Labour 2009 event part 2 (.mp3)

Conservatives 2009 event part 1 (.mp3)
Conservatives 2009 event part 2 (.mp3)

Media

The ippr fringe events were among the highlights of the 2009 conference season and were extensively covered in the media:

The Conservatives' first 100 days, Guardian - 8 October 2009
Better-off families to lose tax credits and baby pay-outs, Daily Mail - 7 October 2009
Will we hear the next cry for help?, Daily Telegraph - 30 September 2009
Brown prepares his last desperate roll of the dice, The Observer - 27 September 2009
MPs should be sharpening taxes as well as axes, The Guardian - 28 September 2009
Parties face conference backlash, politics.co.uk - 25 September 2009
Lib Dems would be compelled to work with Labour after Tory victory – Menzies Campbell, Guardian - 22 September 2009
Labour-Lib Dem coalition back on the agenda, New Statesman - 22 September 2009
Public scepticism takes the steam out of debate, Financial Times - 22 September 2009

For more information on ippr's events programme, contact events@ippr.org.

follow us on twitter:

http://twitter.com/ippr

ippr in the news:

The English question seen from Westminster
Devolution Matters - February 3

The English Question
BBC Radio Scotland - February 2

Make climate change politics matter
Financial Times - February 2

Chances of Copenhagen climate talks 'rematch' unlikely, say experts
The Guardian - February 1

Tory MPs tell David Cameron: Cut Scotland's subsidy
Telegraph - February 1

Government 'tick box' approach to ethnicity drives whites towards BNP, IPPR report says
The Telegraph - January 28

Don't leave equalities stranded
politics.co.uk - January 28

Prison reform consensus builds but ministers fail to take heed
Public Finance - 20 January

48% of black youth in UK don’t have jobs: IPPR
New Statesman - January 20

Analysis: National security's Tory tint
politics.co.uk - 15 January

Capable Communities

Public Service Reform: The next chapter

In this paper we turn our attention to the role citizens and communities can play in directly producing services, setting out the challenges that lie ahead, and identifying the questions our research will seek to answer over the coming months.