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October 06, 2005

Conference Round-up

I've just returned from Blackpool, at the end of what has been a fascinating and productive set of conferences. We kicked off with a 100+ Lib Dems cramming into a room on the first day of their conference to hear from a very accomplished and youthful panel of MPs. At Labour we again had a 100+ audience taking part in lively discussions, this time with Neil Kinnock, John Denham et al. Both the rally and the annual reformers reception at Labour attracted groups of sixth-formers from local colleges. What was most striking about the week in Brighton was that electoral reform, together with associated issues around re-engaging with the electorate, was a hot topic on the fringe - not just from the audience but from panellists too. Back in Blackpool, we got a much better reception from Conservatives than we had expected. A reception hosted by Jonathan Evans MEP attracted 50+ people and led to an impromptu and intelligent Q&A session. The CAER meeting the next day also attracted a respectable audience and was another chance to flyer the Winter Gardens queues with our message on voting reform. There has been some useful press coverage over the past weeks on the issue too; mainly, but not solely, in the Independent. My favourite was an Andrew Gilligan piece in the Evening Standard on why the next big issue for those on the centre/left should be voting reform. A fuller run-down of MVC at the Conferences will appear here soon.

Posted by malcolmclark on October 06, 2005

Comments

Posted by: Tim Worstall at October 8, 2005 04:22 PM

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