OPINION

    Germany is another country. I am a great sceptic about those who want to extrapolate from history or other cultures obvious messages. How many mistakes have been made in foreign policy because foreign secretaries believe they are at another Munich moment ?   However, we must be prepared to learn what we can in the absence of exact cultural and historical parallels. The FDP humiliation in the recent elections does not teach us everything but it teaches us something.  

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In case you missed it - Gareth Epps reflects on Federal Conference On Left Foot Forward - After Glasgow: What did the left get out of the Lib Dem conference? On Huffington Post - A Pyrrhic Victory?

**September 15th UPDATE** The SLF's amendments to tomorrow's economic policy debate have rightly attracted attention from party members, the leadership and the media.(Amendment 1 (future economic strategy) will be moved by Naomi Smith and summated by David Howarth. Amendment 2 (for homes and jobs) will be moved by John (Lord) Shipley, Summator Paul Holmes). In an inte

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The Social Liberal Forum’s amendments to Nick Clegg’s economy motion – supported by an unprecedented number of voting representatives – seek to ensure that the party retains distinctive, independent economic narrative up to and beyond the next election. The narrative behind Nick’s motion – which, to be clear, has a great deal that Liberal Democrats can be proud of – is clear enough. Here is the rationale behind our amendments. On housing, the motion highlights government guarantee schemes that

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 In an earlier post (28^th May, 2013) I suggested that at least ten days after a general election be allowed for the  formation of a government - time which would be especially important when a coalition government of two or more parties was being put together. I want now to suggest that it is rather silly to try to apply to a coalition government the same rules of collective responsibility as have traditionally applied to one-party governments.  I suggest that an

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In 1929, a general election took place while Britain was in the grip of economic difficulty and unemployment was high. Under the leadership of David Lloyd George, the Liberal Party chose to stand for election under the slogan “We Can Conquer Unemployment.”  What Lloyd George proposed was a radical set of economic policies designed to tackle unemployment by stimulating public infrastructure through house bu

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In the run up to party conference you get all kinds of media stories.  Usually what happens is the party identifies some key issues and pushes those hard.  Meanwhile the media looks for a few key stories and goes for them. Most of the debates will be overlooked in the quest to find a simple narrative  which is usually about which side is winning, who’s up and who’s down. You could be forgiven for thinking that party conferences only ever debate one or two topics and that only a handful of peopl

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More than 100 Lib Dem Conference representatives have signed up to support amendments on the economy moved by SLF. As a show of support for a statement Party policy as opposed to opposition to a Government action, this is exceptional and possibly unprecedented.

SLF decided to table two separate amendments, one tailored to generating shorter-term economic growth

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