I love the Lib Dem conference, which starts next Saturday in Brighton. But sometimes I tire of the antics of those getting up to make speeches in the conference hall. There are several sources of my irritation. One is speakers who take part only to talk about some hobbyhorse issue, taking no other interest in the issue at hand. Another is speakers who seem to genuinely think they are radical, challenging politicians, but who in fact oppose anything controversial. And then there are the self-congratulatory, who simply can’t see how the party and its deliberations look from the outside.
So to get these irritations out of my ststem, I have produced the following table of pet hates from the conference floor:
Excellent! My personal favourite is ‘no change is no alternative’, which can usually be translated as ‘please accept this poorly thought out policy motion that has been hashed out behind closed doors for the last three years, because otherwise FPC/Andrew Lansley might cry.’
And “I oppose this motion because it does not go far enough” meaning “that was the only way I could get myself called…”