The Sketch: Yes, the Lib Dems will always be the party of the future

Freedom is the Lib Dem watchword. Liberty! Or, because this is politics, the opposite! Massive, intrusive, pervasive state power matched with administrative incompetence and unintended consequences that disable good intentions! If freedom really meant anything, for instance, I wouldn't have to come and cover this conference.

Alan Beith kicked off yesterday's proceedings with a panegyric to their value. He lauded the "freedom to live our lives as we choose!" Unless we want to go fox hunting. Or smoke in restaurants. Or not wear seat belts. Lib Dems don't believe in freedom, they believe in passing laws to make people behave responsibly. Mr Beith quoted Hayek, an economist who is, in Lib Dem terms, the Antichrist.

It was almost as silly as Charles Kennedy's election dictum: "Freedom equals fairness." And that was equally as silly as this year's remark: "Freedom cannot be exercised unless people have education." If educations worked, Alan Beith wouldn't be making such disgusting mistakes.

The same struggle is going on in this party as in the other two: how do you get the larger part of two equal and opposite groups of people to vote for you?

The people who are doing better than average and the people who aren't. You say one thing and do its opposite, or you say opposite things and hope that no one will notice the difference. Thus, in a debate on airports we hear that local people should be the arbiters of planning applications, and that the Eurostar line to Rugby should be fast-tracked. You can't have it both ways, but that won't become apparent until the party actually becomes a government.

And when might that be? "The Liberal Democrats are the party of the future," Matthew Taylor wrote in his speech notes. He didn't think this overwhelming enough so he inserted the word "always" and underlined it three times. The Lib Dems will always be the party of the future, he declared. He's almost certainly right. The phrase has been used by the Sketch before, but as a sort of joke, insofar as the Sketch makes jokes. Matthew is the economics spokesman so words aren't part of his portfolio.

Other more gnomic utterances came from Nick Clegg. Castigating the Government's lack of guiding principles, he told us: "Without a reliable weathervane you lose the plot." He also said the Conservative Party was a headless chicken that still had 30 per cent support in the polls. How depressing it must be for Liberal Democrats, to be so out-polled by mutilated poultry.

Perhaps the last words should go to Aidan Thomas, who hadimportant things to say. "The 10 horns of the sea beast are 10 sovereign powers of Europe . . . Though separate dynasties, they are very properly united in a single symbol, and exhibited as one great combination of tyrannical states. This European Commonwealth was composed of monarchies that were all feudatories of the Dragon!"

It didn't seem any less persuasive than anything else said on the day, and it certainly adds a certain texture to the membership.

Simoncarr75@hotmail.com