On the 18th June I attended the Social Liberal Forum event in London, there will be a few blogs emerging about the event, including interviews with Dr Evan Harris, and Vince Cable, as well as a review of the politics on show and the future of the Social Liberal Forum, but I intend to start you with this a more personal account of the day.
After a morning of the world seemingly working against us, be it broken alarm clocks (Please no jokes about Clegg at this point), or nearly missing the train, myself, Spidey (Lisa Harding) and Chris Mills arrived into London fed and watered. Struggling to find the correct building we rushed in five minutes late, in what I am assured is true Liberal Democrat style. We ran to the back and suddenly found myself trying to into a row, and sitting next to Dr Evan Harris, I must say I was a little star struck.
I have to admit, must of the first session went over my head, not because it wasn’t interesting, but because I was kind of overcome with the sense of occasion. I looked around to see many people I didn’t know, but a game of spot the twitter user soon commenced, and I was scoring rather highly! How great it was to put faces to names to twitter addresses. Realising that there was a live twitter stream on the back wall using the hash tag #slfconf we were able to post a few messages, including myself tweeting that I wsa sitting next to Evan Harris, and him tweeting that he was sitting next to me! That did amuse me!
Zipping through the introductions, we realised that Vince hadn’t arrived and would be doing so soon, led by Spidey with her camera in hand, she decided that she wanted to play paparazzi, happy to wait around and see Vince arrive, we were soon to be disappointed as he snuck in the back door away from the press…Naughty Vince!
Rushing back up stairs, the debate started and it was a lively one, with some poignant comments, but I must say it was WAY above my head for the most of it! Precise details of banking settlements is just a little bit more advanced than i’m used to!
Disappearing after the debate for fresh air and coffee (It really was an early morning start), we sat down deciding which debate to sneak into late, when we got a message to say that the bloggers assigned to Vince had to get themselves to him there and then! Somewhat of a mad dash occurred followed by Spidey and Chris, we managed to geek out by getting Vince to sign Spideys copy of Vinces book Free Radical! Twas an amazing moment.
After that interview it was soon time for Evan Harris and Chris Huhne, cheekily with permission from Mary Reid, I snook into the Evan Harris interviewers group, again very interesting.
More sessions passed, which are worthy of blogs on the own, but special mention after lunch has to go to the last session with Simon Hughes, and others whose names I don’t have to hand. This session based on political alignments and the future for the SLF was genuinely interesting, startling, thought provoking and funny.
It seemed very much to be a *lets hug labour* session from many, it may be sensible to think about how we deal with Labour for people to tone down the rhetoric to enable us to work together etc etc etc. But any regular read of this blog will know that, I despise Labour with a passion. So when an ex Liberal Democrat who’d joined Labour and now a compass member, started to lecture members of the party on tribalism and civil liberties I couldn’t help feel a slight sense of anger. It was gladly met however by the heckling that it rightly deserved. Going back to the twitter stream mentioned, it had been turned back on for this debate, and when the tweet “Is this man in the right party? ———->” appeared next to the speakers head, there was stifled laughter around the room, the joke was on the compass speaker, many more followed, including a personal favourite off “and now a party political broadcast for the Labour Party” the room enlivened and the debate came alive with the sound of sniggering. I must admit I did more than my fair share and felt like a naughty school kid at the back of a classroom!
But overall it was a good debate, but it must be said we forget that Ed Miliband made it very clear he wants to make us extinct at our own peril, Labour is never the answer (Unless the question is who is the most brutal authoritarian liberty hating, wealth gap expanding, banker loving, war starting, nasty conservatives to ever hold power?)
A wide and varied day with some great discussion points, a definite recommendation to anybody of any tradition within the party, and a big thankyou to the hosts and organisers!
The view we take with Labour is that there is a large authoritarian wing to that party, but that Compass is the Liberal wing of that party, the heirs if you like to the late Robin Cook MP.
We did not invite the authoritarian wing, whether they are Blairites or on the hard left.
If we want our options open at the next general election, then we have to make links with sections of the Labour party, and Compass are the people we can do business with.
Conversely many of us feel in a similar way to you about the Tories. However we did try to invite one from the Tory party as well to debate the Big Society with us.
What we were doing at this conference was to challenge the tribalists in our party. It may have made you feel uncomfortable but I guess what we would say to that is “mission accomplished!”
The point well made here is that Mathew Sowemimo really did act as if he was trying to recruit more defectors to Labour. He claimed not to be tribal, before saying he wanted a Labour government at the next election, and I got told off by a member of the panel for suggesting as much for the LibDems!
Should we talk with others? of course – the point of being in gov’t with a right-leaning party proves we DO work and talk to others, we don’t need to be lectured by Labour on how to liaise with others. We had the cajones to actually enter coalition with the Left’s arch-nemesis, so why do Labour feel we need training on not being tribalist?
Good overall view – watch for my article on LDV today!
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