Political

MP conference fringe league table 2015: Tom Brake is the new Simon Hughes

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Back for its seventh, slimmed down, year is my Liberal Democrat autumn conference MP fringe league table along with the annual award of the Simon Hughes Memorial Prize for the most simultaneous fringe meeting bookings by an MP at party conference.

As ever, this is based on the information from the official listings and I have included MPs marked as “tbc” and “invited” but excluded those who are not listed even if I know otherwise (as my extra information is only partial). The Rally and Q+As are excluded.

Joint winner this time, with a record low winning tally, are Tom Brake and Norman Lamb. Both also put in a bid for that Simon Hughes Memorial Prize, but Tom edges out the rest of the field by scooping three simultaneous bookings in just the one fringe slot.

5
Tom Brake
Norman Lamb

3
Tim Farron

2
Nick Clegg
John Pugh

1
Mark Williams

0
Alistair Carmichael
Greg Mulholland

 

Previous years:

  • 2014 – most fringes Norman Lamb (19); Simon Hughes Memorial Prize – Norman Lamb (3)
  • 2013 – most fringes Vince Cable (16); Simon Hughes Memorial Prize – Vince Cable (4)
  • 2012 – most fringes Ed Davey (13); Simon Hughes Memorial Prize – Norman Baker (4)
  • 2011 –  most fringes Andrew Stunell and Simon Hughes (16); Simon Hughes Memorial Prize – Andrew Stunell and Vince Cable (3)*
  • 2010 – most fringes Vince Cable (15); Simon Hughes Memorial Prize – Paul Burstow, Vince Cable, Lynne Featherstone and Sarah Teather (3)
  • 2009 – most fringes Vince Cable (17); Simon Hughes Memorial Prize – Simon Hughes (3)

 

* This was a very special year for double-bookings because, “Special mention for daring double booking must go to Huppert and Lamb both of whom have a double booking when in one of the slots they are down as the only speaker. Presumably they are hoping for very long-winded questions that are so unclear that they can safely nip out, give a talk somewhere else and then return in time to give an answer as if they’d been listening all the time. In fairness, evidence from past conferences suggests this is not an unreasonable hope. On simple numbers they lose out to Andrew Stunell and his triple booking. But even he loses out to Vince Cable’s extra special triple booking where not only is he the only speaker listed at one of the events, the format is in fact him being interviewed. Absence from stage may be tricky during that one even allowing for the slightly shifted time of the interview.”

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