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It was the Liberal Democrat conference this week and you could be forgiven for not having noticed. So for those of you with better things to do with their lives than watch rolling news all day, which has nothing to show but live feeds from the conference, I give you five things you should know about the Lib Dem conference, or to use if for some unaccountable reason you end up discussing it…

1) It looks like Ming the Merciless is secure in his job, at least for now. Before the conference there was speculation, that Charlie Kennedy (he who was ousted as leader earlier this year for drinking diet coke in the morning*) would upstage Ming in his farewell leaders’ speech, but the general consensus is that Charlie was jovial and well meaning, went on a bit too long and is currently not plotting a return to power. Ming also secured a key policy change, of which more later.

2) However, Charlie refused to either have Ming on the conference platform whilst giving the speech or to shake his hand at any point. He may be plotting a return to power later.

3) The one flagship policy the Lib Dems have (other than opposing everything the other two parties say), that of a top rate of 50p on income tax has been dropped in favour of some sort of green tax. We’ll worry about the details when the Lib Dems look like they are going to get into power…

4) Speaking of which, Ming said some very rude things about David Cameron’s Conservatives. Putting on hold for now speculation that in the result of a hung parliament after the next election, there could be a Conservative/Lib Dem coalition rather than a Lib/Lab coalition.

5) Before Ming’s leaders’ speech to the Conference, delegates were shown footage of Ming’s sporting past (he was once the fastest man in Britain) to underline Ming’s youthfulness and vitality. Unfortunately much of the footage of Ming running was in black and white…

Three things
Political quote of the week: “We lied in the morning, we lied in the evening”, Ferenc Gyurcsany, Hunagrian PM
New Scottish Tory Logo unveiled: It’s a slightly larger, darker, less right leaning oak tree
Next week: Labour party fight like cats and dogs in Manchester

*There’s only ever one excuse for drinking diet coke first thing in the morning…

This entry was posted on Friday, September 22nd, 2006 at 4:06 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.