I don't think I will ever understand the Lib Dems. There is something very right about them, but at the same time very wrong. It was quite giggleworthy hearing Nick Clegg talk today of being 'ready to be PM' (sorry to set you all off again) and it did strike me that he would have more chance if he had a parliamentary party which wasn't disconnected from a fair proprtion of their membership.
In hindsight, my reason for going down to Bournemouth is hard to ascertain. It was perhaps curiosity, perhaps the lure of a libertarian fringe meeting (though I've been to similar before), or perhaps because I had extricated some freetime and was attracted by the offer of a free glass of wine (and the rest).
Having booked what turned out to be a rather handy hotel room, with breakfast bunged in for £45, at 10pm the night before, I set off around lunchtime with a borrowed Tomtom, my first time driving with a strangely distracting screen in front of me (glass half empty, someone will propose banning them soon, probably Lib Dems funny enough), and with a decal of Bart Simpson pulling a moon on the back of the company runaround knackered Focus. Sitting in the bar to access the WiFi, Lib Dems started wandering in après-conference - straight past the attendant latin barman and onto the smoking deck to light whopping cigars, roll-ups, you name it.
How very odd, thought I. This is the most anti-smoking party of the big three. The only one who included a blanket smoking ban in their 2005 manifesto (so liberal, huh?), unlike the party who actually passed it. And they have enthusiastic smokers in their ranks?
That was just a taster.
So I wandered for 2 minutes down the hill (told you the hotel was handy) to the Politics and Prohibition do, and was quaffing an overpriced Fosters when the excellent Chris Snowdon happened along, fresh from being harangued by a quite seriously deranged lunatic.
Having tapped his wallet for the next beverage, the meeting started, and my view of the Lib Dems became even more confused.
Left to right: Tom Clougherty (Adam Smith Institute), Simon Clark (Forest), Mark Littlewood (Liberal Vision), Charlotte Gore (Lib Dem überblogger), Colin Eldridge (Lib Dem Councillor and PPC), Dr Belinda Brookes-Gordon (Psychologist and Lib Dem Councillor)
Almost 60 of the buggers turned up. Yellow lanyards were the new black, so much so that I almost wish I'd been wearing one. Almost.
This is the party which parrots the word 'ban' at almost every opportunity, yet here were freedom-lovers piling in and really enjoying the content.
Curiouser and curiouser.
The speakers, without exception, were ... err ... exceptional. Colin Eldridge from Liverpool was the target of most of the post-debate questions. Not surprising considering he is a proponent of the move to give films an 18 certificate if they contain smoking scenes. He put up a spirited defence, with such vigour that, large guy that he is, he must have partaken of a tray full of Red Bull before sitting down, though this attender (not attendee, it's just wrong) wondered if his message would have been tailored differently to a less libertarian audience. His motive was, of course, to protect the chiiildren. What's more, the kids asked for it and were in no way whatsoever guided to that point of view. Not at all. His speech can be listened to here (bad recording, turn the speakers up).
Belinda Brookes-Gordon kinda overran - a lot, but her detailed explanation of why the restrictions on the sex trade are quite ridiculous and counterproductive was well-received by members of the most proscriptive party in the parliamentary closed-shop triumverate.
It was all the more baffling when we crashed the Marriott Highcliff Hotel at blur o'clock. Wife-beater was the only draught available for southern beer philistines such as I, and boy was it consumed with enthusiasm. The only alcohol limit that was being observed was the one which said you've had too many when your cash runs out.
It finished at 5am, and only then because the staff really wanted to go home (big yawn), thanks very much. We're not talking a few trailing dregs of humanity here either, the place was rammed inside and out. Imbibing inside, puffing outside whilst trampling on broken wine glass detritus. I was starting to believe that I'm not such a night-owl after all in comparison to these animals.
And everyone I spoke to stressed the 'liberal' credentials of the Lib Dems. How very liberal they were themselves, too. And I fully believe them, if only because I saw it with my own self-abused double-seeing eyes.
I wandered lonely as a zig-zag staggering cloud back to my hotel thinking that this party is full of people who are as liberal as me {hic}. So why is the overwhelming message from their PLPs so very different? The only conclusion must be that the rank and file are intensely welcoming of liberal ideas and thinking, but the policymakers are, as Charlotte Gore points out on her blog, scared of fully expressing what the liberal amongst us want to hear.
We need our politicians to have the confidence and courage to re-frame this debate, to let a valid, reasoned argument be heard in public, in the mainstream and not just out here in the fringes.
This was playing on my mind as I sunk into an unbelievably deep sleep which resulted in my not stirring until 2 hours after my alarm had no doubt gone apoplectic.
And I missed breakfast. Bastards.
