Back to blog, back to reality...
My it's all getting exciting isn't it? All this party political stuff, what with the various conferences. I went to my first ever conference for a day and a half and sat through an really excellent debate on our new tax proposals. The Green Switch.
I even sat through something that described itself rather hopefully as a debate on nuclear fuel. I say 'rather hopefully', as we were all pretty solid in our opposition to nuclear fuel, or any other sort of nuclear for that matter, so the debate was pretty one sided but I guess that makes it more good natured doesn't it?
I was struck in the following two weeks by the remarkable differences between the LibDem conference and the Labour and Conservative ones. We spend our time debating policy, the Labour Party spends it's time bickering about jobs and skirting round any discussion on policy, and the Con's (once again the shortened version says it all!) made a point of avoiding policy like the plague.
The country tells us time and time again that they want substance, not the politics of spin, yet the two other main parties really can't bring themselves to discuss the way forward, preferring to concentrate on the cult of personality over anything to do with reality.
Now we're all back from the holiday season (conference by another name), we've just announced that we are already rolling out several of our central manifesto pledges. The Labour group, or at least their mouth-piece Theo Blackwell (can any of the others even talk?) has tried to spin even at this point. One would have thought that rather than trying to form a few catchy sound-bites, he and his front bench colleagues would be trying to think up their own manifesto pledges. It works so well for us, maybe it's worth a go by them?
I even sat through something that described itself rather hopefully as a debate on nuclear fuel. I say 'rather hopefully', as we were all pretty solid in our opposition to nuclear fuel, or any other sort of nuclear for that matter, so the debate was pretty one sided but I guess that makes it more good natured doesn't it?
I was struck in the following two weeks by the remarkable differences between the LibDem conference and the Labour and Conservative ones. We spend our time debating policy, the Labour Party spends it's time bickering about jobs and skirting round any discussion on policy, and the Con's (once again the shortened version says it all!) made a point of avoiding policy like the plague.
The country tells us time and time again that they want substance, not the politics of spin, yet the two other main parties really can't bring themselves to discuss the way forward, preferring to concentrate on the cult of personality over anything to do with reality.
Now we're all back from the holiday season (conference by another name), we've just announced that we are already rolling out several of our central manifesto pledges. The Labour group, or at least their mouth-piece Theo Blackwell (can any of the others even talk?) has tried to spin even at this point. One would have thought that rather than trying to form a few catchy sound-bites, he and his front bench colleagues would be trying to think up their own manifesto pledges. It works so well for us, maybe it's worth a go by them?
posted by Arthur Graves at 12:54 AM
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