Sandals are being rattled in Birmingham this morning. The Liberal Democrat conference opens to a chorus celebrating the party’s achievements in government. Nick Clegg tells the Independent that “Liberal Democrat fingerprints” are all over flagship coalition policies on schools, welfare, pensions, banking reform and the NHS reforms. He says of the latter that the Liberal Democrats...

The party has this morning issued the following briefing note on the achievements of the Lib Dems within the Coalition Government … In just 10 weeks since the start of the Coalition Government, the Liberal Democrats have exerted a huge influence over its agenda. Going into the election the Liberal Democrats made clear that they

So, another week, and more policies announced that are definitely not Liberal Democrat in origin. Particularly one close to my liberal heart on the issue of paying for University education. Now that debate will rumble on and on, but I want to look more closely at whether the Lib Dems did indeed “sell out” on

The Welsh Liberal Democrats report: The Welsh Liberal Democrat Assembly Member for South Wales West, Peter Black has welcomed the budget deal between Labour and the Liberal Democrats that will deliver an extra £450 directly to local schools for each child on free school meals. The total package will mean that schools in Swansea, Neath

Can the Lib Dems put forward radical, exciting, truly liberal policies and still attract substantial and growing levels of electoral support? According to Liberal Vision, which I helped set up last month, the answer is a definitive “yes”. In fact, adopting the former could well be the best way of achieving the latter. Liberal Vision wants

I've only had a chance to read the first couple of paragraphs as I haven't bought the Scotsman (yet) but I see Malcolm Bruce is feeling a bit nervy about the Lib Dems plight: POLITICAL commentators, lazy and obsessed by metropolitan bias, seem to be incapable of understanding or even noticing that the Liberal Democrats are a significant force in British and Scottish politics. An opinion ...

“The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society”. These are the first fourteen words of the Preamble to the Constitution of the Liberal Democrats. It was this statement that finally made me decide to join the Lib Dems nearly ten years ago, and has kept me campaigning, working and

Coalition is a tricky business, full of compromise and connivance. Emblazoned across the front page of the Sunday Times (£) is the news that Control Orders are to be scrapped. A victory for Nick Clegg, we are told, won to nurture wounded Liberal Democrats and preserve the coalition. The Liberal Democrat 2010 manifesto maintained that Control Orders would be abolished and many senior Liberal D...

Like all Liberal Democrats, I would never support a Tory government. Most of us have spent many years asking countless people to vote Lib Dem to “keep the Tories out”, but I actually think that’s exactly what we’ve done. Without the Liberal Democrats the Tories would have a majority now. So many Lib Dems seats are

Much of the debate on the deal between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats to form a coalition government has focused on how "strange" it was for the two parties to enter a partnership. In The Liberal Democrat Journey, published by Compass, Dr Richard Grayson details the transformation of the Liberal Democrats over the past decade and shows why the coalition is not all that alien.