The Lib Dems in Bournemouth

 The Lib Dems in Bournemouth.

Hold the front page everybody. It's the party political conference season folks. It's that time of the year again. Fresh from their summer holidays, the seaside, the buckets and spades, sandcastles and fish and chips of the local  promenade, the politicians are back on the news agenda. Yes they're that lovable body of men and women who keep pleading for your votes every time there's a General Election. Here are the ladies and gentlemen who keep promising to lead us into the Garden of Eden, Nirvana, sunlit uplands, where the sun always shines and everybody hugs us warmly because everything has turned out for the best. How can they contain themselves?

This week the Liberal Democrats will be quite literally banging the drum for democracy and becoming as liberal and chilled out as it's possible to be. Not a chance, mutter the cynics. There's more chance of the climate change dilemma reaching a resolution, man or woman landing on the Moon again, reality TV turning into a riveting spectacle and Boris Johnson duly re-elected as Prime Minister of the UK again. Be careful what you wish for though. It may just happen. 

Under the shrewd leadership of Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrats are beginning to emerge from their shell, acutely aware of the opposition parties weaknesses and wondering whether this could be their time. And yet who are they kidding or perhaps they're not as delusional as we thought they were. The poor old Lib Dems have always been left in the background on matters of importance so none are really taking them that seriously as a credible political force. They remain in the shadows and margins of public life hovering and loitering with intent but no real threat. 

For as long as any of us can remember the Liberals, as they used to be known and now the Liberal Democrats, have been dismissed as an end of pier joke, ridiculed and lampooned by the comedy script writers, thrown to the lions and then devoured by the hungry hordes who just want to obliterate them from the map. They giggle at their idiosyncrasies, their whimsical quirks, their well intentioned philosophies but then their faults and foibles too numerous to mention according to those who have seen it all before.

Way back then we cast our eyes on the controversial figure of Jeremy Thorpe and then Jo Grimond in charge of a political party who were the butt of a million gags and wisecracks. Who on earth could possibly imagine a country led by the Liberals, laid back to the point of being lethargic and not really posing a major threat to the mainstream parties? The Liberals were always accused of being too prim and puritanical, morally correct but never robust, serious or purposeful as such. 

But this week the party political conference swings back into action, returning perhaps to its spiritual roots. Some of us believed that both the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems always felt at home by the seaside. Every year they all took it into turns to swap around both Bournemouth, Brighton and Blackpool almost alternately. And then there was Margate where you could almost smell the political hot air. But then repetition bordered on the tedious and, in more recent times, Birmingham and Manchester have thrown their hat into the ring as the forums of lively debates.

So here we go again. It's Bournemouth for the Lib Dems and the candy floss is on the house. There will be an air of optimism and they will try to make a vociferous noise. But we'll all think that this will be just an excuse for a good, old fashioned knees up next to the Winter Gardens. They'll be discussing and proposing, chewing the cud, formulating policies but never really convinced that miracles can happen. True the Tories and the Labour parties are both struggling and the Tories are just treading water or seemingly so. But from where we are at the moment, it just looks like a muddled mess 

Tomorrow the serious business will start for the Lib Dems and somebody may remind them that those dreams may come true. In the early 2000s David Cameron of the Conservative party joined forces with Nick Clegg of the Lib Dems. The iconic image of both Cameron and Clegg standing in the garden of 10 Downing Street may come to haunt Clegg. The body language became so strikingly obvious that you could almost feel the tension between the two men. Clegg smiled warmly, chuckled briefly and then looked at Cameron rather like an alien from another planet. Now though it all seems like ancient history.

Then politics became a desolate wasteland for the Lib Dems, a cold, forbidding and dark alleyway where only the fittest survive. At some point the realists and pragmatists will tell the Lib Dems to just get back to their constituencies and surgeries as soon as possible. It just won't happen this time or any time for that matter.  They'll be busy talking and murmuring fond hopes but this is a party with realistically little to offer of any concrete value. But you never know. Stranger things have been known to happen and besides the bigger bullies in the playground are still fighting and there's nothing wrong with having ambitions.

They'll have a wonderful time in Bournemouth, soak up the bracing sea air and then just gaze with admiration at the gulls swooping down on human chips. You'll have a look at the market research polls, congratulating themselves on performing competently at by elections before looking at the bigger picture and just resigning themselves to that grim fate. We'll see you at the General Election next year but we won't be putting money on you at the bookmakers. 

So if you're in town in sunny Bournemouth spare a thought for those wearing a flash of yellow on their rosettes. They may think they know where they're going but this is the one political party that has to be admired for their perseverance since heads banging against brick walls is the only kind of image to be conjured when you think of the Liberal Democrats. In a way you have our best wishes for the week ahead but as Britain prepares to go to the polls next year it may as well be to remember the Gang of Four of Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, Bill Rogers and Sir David Steel when the Social Democrats tried to change the direction that British politics seemed to be heading towards. For 1981 read 2023. Oh we do like to beside the seaside.