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Postcard from Bournemouth. Camden
Lib Dems pose for a conference shot |
Didn’t we have a lovely time the week we went to Bournemouth?
Conference sketch. Richard Osley
reports from Bournemouth
GOODNIGHT Flick. Goodnight Nancy. Goodnight Keith.
If you didn’t know better, you’d think the Lib Dems from Camden tucked each other in at night and issued farewell beddy-byes like an episode of The Waltons.
So close knit and familiar in their own company, their jaunt to Bournemouth resembled a family outing to the seaside. A sea view and some shandy, as they set up camp high on the hill overlooking the resort’s beaches.
This family has a few sisters but more excitable brothers – mainly men in their 20s or 30s with brown hair and glasses – and a couple of wise aunties.
The worst fear, you imagine, for some of the cousins is not so much to lose a vote during an internal debate over mansion taxes – more to miss an invitation to a group pizza lunch or an oyster breakfast.
With a lively social diary, they work and play together.
Many of the younger guys, however, were not just here for the slot machines and kiss-me-quick hats.
Appearances can be deceptive. Not just a week by the sea for them, faces from Camden and could be seen pressing the flesh with faces from the frontbench. A lot of them work in PR and know how to network within the party.
The Camden family is being taken seriously at HQ, where it once just amounted to two or three councillors. The nods and winks prove that Ed Fordham is as well connected as he says he is.
It is, however, a bit spooky that whichever family member you ask a question on policy, the answer will be the same.
A cruel observer might say it’s almost cult-like, robotic. In the old days, the Labour group had such passionate debates, some of the councillors would refuse to drink in the same pub afterwards. There were fierce ideological debates that must have been dramatic to watch.
“We don’t agree on everything,” one Lib Dem told me this week. Really?
I expect there was a lively argument over whether to go for an evening stroll along the sea front or spend the entire evening in the hotel bar. |
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