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Much as I like Glasgow as a city, the weather tends to be less than welcoming and that was true again this week.
Yet the buffeting winds didn’t seem to affect Nick Clegg; there seems to be broad agreement that this was a good conference for him, with his message that ‘Government is better with us than without us’ accepted by the party faithful and disseminated to the masses via the media. He even got a vote of confidence in the party’s economic strategy (even if Vince Cable seemed more sceptical).
The conference did seem a little quiet, as predicted, although that may have as much to do with the cavernous conference centre as the numbers of people there – as always, there was no shortage of people in the main conference bar. The general atmosphere was also a little more subdued than I’d expected two years before an election, despite some lively discussions, not least at our fringe on ‘Cities Manifesto’ and our Zurich sponsored roundtable on small businesses.
Our Cities Manifesto event covered a lot of ground. It was good to hear from Gordon Birtwhistle MP that cities continue to be central to the Lib Dems’ policies around economic growth, and from Cllr Paul Tilsley about the work that Birmingham is doing to make the most of its assets. London’s role was debated, with questions about whether it was good or bad for the UK and what could be done about it. We talked about the importance of skills and the need for more apprenticeships, as well as how centralised we are as a country and how much Whitehall can act as a barrier to change. As always, there were more questions than answers but certainly much for us to consider as we put together our ‘Think Cities’ campaign and work on our manifesto.
Our SME roundtable was also interesting, with contributions from Lorely Burt MP, Wille Rennie (Leader of the Scottish Lib Dems) and Mike Cherry from the FSB. Recognising that each business has different needs, we talked about the importance of supporting skills at a local level, the need to respond more to local business need and the difficulties of navigating overly complex business support systems. One of the most striking conclusions was the importance of ensuring that those devising policy for any business, large or small, need to do far more work to understand how those businesses operate and therefore which policies are likely to be most (and least) effective in supporting the economic growth that the UK continues to need.
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