Liberal Democrat Mid-Term Review comes to Merton

Thursday next week (1st March) I’m off to Merton again, this time to talk at the local Liberal Democrats’ meeting about what the party should be pressing for in government during the second half of this Parliament.

The original plans for a Mid-Term Review / Coalition Phase 2 have been rather scaled back as initial expectations that the Coalition Agreement would only keep people busy in the first half of the Parliament have turned out to be far too optimistic.

Even with that Coalition Agreement still having a lot of life in it, there is still scope for new ideas – which unusually for Liberal Democrats can actually be turned into policy.

One particularly fruitful area I think are topics where there is a good long-term Liberal Democrat policy but, so far, not much in the way of ideas for short-term steps towards it. In opposition, a good long-term policy was often enough in itself; in government it is a big missed opportunity as a long-term policy may be good for the 2015 manifesto but short-term steps towards it can actually be implemented before then.

Hope to see lots of people there!