Yup. You’re in the government now, over the parapet, on the radar, in the firing line. It’s not like all those years of responsibility-free posturing.

Yeah, but don’t they do this with every conference of every party?

The story at the moment is always either splitting the coalition or losing our identity. At this rate it will take the media 5 years to understand coalition politics at all.

Wasn’t the role of the media to report and comment on news, not set out to make it? Far too often it appears they are playing up splits (note that the perceived ‘awkward squads’ in all parties regularly report being invited onto news programmes to disagree with their leadership, often despite the fact they actually agree). Hence the recent media obsession with using bloggers and the like, who are alligned to parties but may push a different line.

Since Liberal Democrat splits tend to be pretty obvious (there is a core of honesty/savegery in the party) I doubt there is much of one at the moment. Certainly, if the media narrative of a potential split is correct, its hard to see where the Labour-supporting blogosphere’s narrative of mass defections (did that ever happen…) gets its numbers from.

So the Lib Dems want to be in government and instrumental in creating havoc by supporting right wing policies and yet want to be given an easy time by the media.

You’re sitting at the big boys/girls table now.

That means taking the rough with the smooth. Stop moaning.

Sounds to me like the LD leadership are rattled…. they’re going on the offensive before it even starts.

Something interests me in their claim to be progressive and it relvolving around future generations inheritance. Surely if they were being sincere about this they would be similarly concerned about the environmental inheritance we were leaving them.

But, alas no, nothing. It just shows what a hollow, power-hungy little party the LibDems really are.

“. Surely if they were being sincere about this they would be similarly concerned about the environmental inheritance we were leaving them.”

Don’t forget the bans on private education and inherited wealth that the Coalition’s commitment to fairness for future generations will now surely generate!

@sandy are you sally the labour troll’s twin incestuous sister/cousin, or did you just misspell your own psuedonym?

Lib Dems are down in the polls and seem to have lost a lot of support. Downing Street has handed them about a dozen “sweets” to play up and hand out to delegates to appease them. The whole conference is about feelings over the coalition deal. The “dem” bit of the party is finally being purged to enough an extent that by next year they can probably go back to being the liberal party.

So what else would the narrative be?

Does Mr Baker want to argue that the Labour conference won’t be dominated by the leadership decision or that the Tory conference won’t be a victory parade?