The Sketch: Nice makeover, but it won't put the Lib Dems in government

"Walk tall and people will notice you. Smile! Feel good! Be positive and confident!"

She was headed for Frumpsville. She'd lost her confidence. They texturised her hair and added colour. They had added some foundation. She bought new underwear. "Now you look different, has it made you feel different?" "Like a whole new person!"

This was a makeover programme screened before the Lib Dem conference rather than the conference itself. But fancier sketch writers than myself could make you a whole column on it.

No, by great good fortune, my little boy was too sick to go to school; I had to stay at home and make him learn his French vocab. The Lib Dems were only available on television. They look better on television than they do in the flesh, especially with the new underwear.

The presenter, Andrew Neil, made the deftest observation by saying: "Twenty years ago, David Steel told the conference to go home and prepare for government. Today Charles Kennedy is telling them to go home and prepare for opposition."

The poor fool (I'm talking about Mr Kennedy, of course) is also suggesting he may be Prime Minister after the next election. Such self-delusion, or outright mendacity if you prefer, shows he's got the goods to be a proper politician. Indeed, his conference speech – delivered with unaccustomed passion, vitality and vision – showed us he had finally embraced the banal aspirations of his caste.

His audience loved it all, laughing at the jokes in a way that showed they, like him, were prepared to deny the most obvious realities to make themselves feel better. Do you doubt this? You can't have heard the jokes. Even Conrad Russell was guffawing away like an extra on The Price is Right.

"Again and again, our MPs have reined in the worst excesses of this Government ... Again and again we've called them to account ... Only the Liberal Democrats have probed government failings thoroughly."

It was hard to know what he was trying to say, even though you knew he was pitching for the title of Official Opposition. He can't have meant Liberal Democrat MPs had reined in the worst excesses of this Government. It was the only genuinely funny thing he said all day and no one laughed at all.

The Tories may be in comic disarray, but at least they've been in government. If the Lib Dems ever get into power they'll walk out of their first Treasury briefing with their heads spinning like that girl's in The Exorcist.

On the positive side, Mr Kennedy defeated his critics and enjoyed a ringing endorsement of his rank and file. He has learnt how to throw together wholly unconnected ideas into an electorally attractive proposition. Try this: giving teachers and doctors the opportunity to run schools and hospitals will give parents and patients more power. If anyone has read a sillier statement, I'd be glad to hear of it. Mr Kennedy claimed that their big idea for public services had "put us intellectually on the front foot and back in the right direction".

But with neither a market mechanism nor centrally-set targets, what will keep schools and hospitals up to the mark? Wage bills will erupt spontaneously, and a Lib Dem government will be powerless to stop it. Its theory would be tested to destruction. The length of the experiment would be eight minutes (coincidentally, the proper length for a leader's speech, when the leader is Mr Kennedy).

Simoncarr75@hotmail.com