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The security detail staffing the entrance to the Lib Dems’ conference in Glasgow might have been better employed trying to stop people leaving. The bag scanners hadn’t even turned up a bacon sarnie, let alone anything more dangerous. Like hope, ideas or the will to live. The green credentials were still intact, though. There are so few recognisable faces that even minor celebs, such as Cambridge MP Julian Huppert, are endlessly recycled throughout the venue. Huppert ran from gig to gig, pursued by an adoring special adviser whispering: “You slayed them, Jules. And I just love the colour you’ve dyed your hair.” If you missed him at a fringe meeting at 9, you could catch him at another at 10.30 and again at 12. He even found time to speak in the main hall at A New High Water Mark, a debate on flooding.
Forget tuition fees, proportional representation and reform of the Lords: everyone here already has. Forget the coalition: everyone here would like to. These are all just side issues. Debates on floods, bees and garden cities are where Lib Dem passions rage at an atomic level. For more than an hour, the conference argued whether lines 19-20 “maintain the current level of protection” should be deleted and replaced by “protect against the impacts of climate change”. One speaker said he had changed his mind on the way to the lectern but might change it back again once Vince Cable had spoken. Cable didn’t look as if he could take the pressure. “Why are we having words that everyone agrees could have been better worded added a second time?” asked a latterday Jacques Derrida. Come the vote, the amendment was narrowly thrown out by 145 to 128. Sense had prevailed: the election was now in the bag.
Having dealt with the tricky stuff, Cable was brought on to do a light comedy turn on the economy. All conferences have their buzzwords. For Labour, it was incompetence. For the Tories, it was snake-oil. For the Lib Dems, it has been trust. Or rather the absence of it. No speaker has yet dared mention the word trust and, given that Cable recently plotted to remove Nick Clegg as leader, it was probably as well he decided to stay on message. Well, near enough.
“What we have abandoned is the politics of perpetual protest,” he said. “Nick Clegg’s biggest achievement as party leader has been to make that transformation.” Killing with love: it’s what the Lib Dems do best. Perpetual protest has been replaced by perpetual obscurity. The Lib Dem support is now down to 6%. Even Sherlock Holmes couldn’t get by without a 7% solution.
Cable became progressively more risque, as if he sensed there was little else to lose now. “Is it worse for politicians to forget what to say or to remember what to say but forget to do anything about it?” he asked, leaving the third Clegg-like option of remembering everything you said and doing the exact opposite unspoken but not unheard. Remorselessly, Cable closed in on the self-destruct button. “There is a lot to be proud of,” he said, “and we must be proud of it. We must stand up to pessimism.” The audience rose to give the business secretary the first standing ovation of the conference, before scuttling off to a packed Dying with Dignity event.
