Leaders speech

Nick Clegg made a very good speech today. Very good indeed. But I'm in a curmudgeonly mood, so I'm going to have a go anyway.

I'm fed up with leaders' speeches. We spend most of conference debating motions in a fairly democratic, rational, sometimes even mature, way. And then we have the leader's speech, which actually almost gets some media coverage. And because of the media half-interest we have to have a speech with 73 "clap lines", absurd incidental music, and a 10 minute standing ovation while the guy on the stage runs off into the crowd like it's a sodding football match.

I don't like feeling treacherous if I can't be arsed to clap something inane like "There are no mistakes made by government that cannot be set right by the British people. If only they are given the chance." I'm not saying it's a bad speech. But it's a speech designed to elicit applause every 60 seconds. Is there not something a bit weird about that?

An emotionally manipulative soundtrack is fine for Rocky or romcoms, but it's infantile to have it accompanying what is meant to be a reasoned political argument.

And at the end I was half expecting balloons and stars and stripes confetti to come tumbling down from the ceiling. Surely we could manage to close a conference and still maintain a little decorum?

In short, please leave the presentationalism to Labour, the Tories and America.

Oh, and Europe didn't warrant a mention? I'm told that Nick spent all week saying how he was proud he was to be pro-European. And yet barely a word in the speech. Does anyone at Cowley Street actually care about the European elections? They should. At least in the European Parliament Lib Dems exercise a bit of influence and power.

OK, yes, I know. The leader's speech has to reach beyond the conference hall. And maybe, just maybe, all that guff actually works. But to quote Nick:

It's condescending. Talking down to us. Talking us down.

Ignore me. I'm sleep-deprived.

Vince challenges for leadership

Hi! I'm a lib dem! I might introduce myself properly at a later date. Right now, I'm just going to get down to it:

On a recent edition of Armando Iannucci's frequently hilarious Charm Offensive, Armando claimed that the clearest evidence that David Miliband was making a blatant challenge for the leadership of his party was that he had publicly dropped T's in a Radio 4 interview, aping Tony Blair's faux-estuary accent.

Listening to Vince Cable's warmly received speech at conference on Monday morning, I realised he was doing exactly the same thing, replacing T's at the ends of words with glottle stops.

...New Labour incubated a culture of financial gambling with other peoples' money which has contributed to the collapse of trust in financial institutions. It also bred a dangerous dependence on de'.

You will have heard me, every year, warning that British families were acquiring unsustainable levels of de'. Most of this de' was secured against the illusory ‘wealth' of rising, vastly inflated property prices. People have been encouraged to believe they would rise for ever and ever.

Those of us who warned of the dangers were initially treated as eccentric, then as scaremongers and prophets of doom. But we were righ'.

How will Clegg respond to this outright insubordination?

Hello World

That is all for now.