Perfect with a hot chocolate: 7 longer reads for the holiday season

As this is the week most people have a little more spare time, here’s a set of longer-reads to enjoy (once again).

Slip on some comfy slippers, grab a hot chocolate*, sit back and enjoy some of these over the next few days:

• Tim Farron’s brilliant first conference speech as leader was rated by many as the best they’d heard – so watch it here if you’ve missed out on it so far.
• It’s About Freedom: one of the best attempts to set out what the Lib Dems believe
• Why Liberal Democrats love bar charts, aka a history of Liberal Democrat campaigning.
• Orange Bookers, Social Liberals: what are the differences all about? Find out in David Howarth’s excellent chapter for Reinventing the State.
• What went wrong with the Liberal Democrat polling and key seat intelligence? Or why for the rest of his days Paddy Ashdown will have people shout invitations at him to eat their hat.
• Ah, happy days: the 1906 Liberal landslide (with rather more similarities with 21st century politics than you might expect).
• And finally, a bit of counter-factual history: the 1832 Great Reform Act passed one key Parliamentary vote by just one. What if one MP had changed their mind and the Reform Bill had been defeated?

* But be careful where you drink it.