The overlooked debate at Lib Dem conference: 11.30am Tuesday morning
I’ve mentioned a few times recently two particular items on the agenda at the forthcoming Liberal Democrat federal conference in Brighton:
- The pair of consultation sessions (Saturday and Sunday) on reforming the party
- The proposals to fix the party’s broken disciplinary process
There is a third item, though, which I’ve only mentioned the once and I suspect a fair number of people have missed, so far at least. That’s because there has been a lot of talk in the party in the last few days about the party needing to be clearer about what it is for.
Tuesday 18 September, 11.30am is when just that will be debated in the form of the policy paper, Demand Better: Liberal Democrat priorities for a Better Britain.
As the title gives away, it uses the framing from the party’s new messaging (explained in Lib Dem Newswire #115). It’s a broad policy round-up, like a pre-manifesto in its breadth.
Here also is the full paper for you to digest ahead of the debate:
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Housebuilding – inconsistency between the orange arrow summary p8 (250,000) and the text p10 (300,000) – the text reflects the general consensus, including the initial Lib Dem response a few years back.
The huge omission is devolution and empowerment. While the document notes that government has centralised and local authority budgets have been squeezed, it has nothing of substance to say on what we’d do about it. No-one reading this would get the idea that Liberalism had anything to do with giving power to people.