Lib Dems dashed from their hotel breakfasts – ‘I’ll stick to the prunes, Derek’ an ageing buffet-goer had said at the Holiday Inn – but not for the reason you might think.
The day’s first debate was on proportional representation. For Lib Dems, 9am on a Monday doesn’t get more exciting than that. There was a slow-motion stampede for the conference hall, the halt and lame, wonkish and weird hobbling down the sea front, trousers flapping, walking sticks clacking like castanets as they hastened to the big event.
By the time I fought my way to the hall Christine Jardine, MP for Edinburgh West, was complaining that the worst thing about Britain was that ‘nobody quite understands the D’Hondt principle – except in this room perhaps’. That drew knowing clucks from the audience of electoral reform connoisseurs.
The D’Hondt method is a complicated system of dishing out parliamentary seats. It is named after a 19th century Belgian mathematician, Victor D’Hondt, who may have been the Carol Vorderman of Victorian Ghent.
Outside, sunbathers enjoyed a beautiful day, children ate ice creams and a middle-aged man with a Mohican hairdo was having a devil of a time with the seaside breezes. You can always spot punk-rockers from coastal towns. Their Mohawks bend at an angle like clifftop blackthorn bushes.
While all this cheerful life was happening by the beach, those of us inside the conference hall were being subjected to a tooth-grinding discussion about alternative vote plus, single transferable votes and top-up components.
We heard that overseas voters should have their own MPs – imagine being the Hon Member for the Algarve – and that there should be another referendum on proportional representation. Nick Clegg lost one in 2011 but Lib Dems do not let that stop them boring on about the issue.
Same with Brexit. A former parliamentary candidate disclosed that she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, so badly shaken was she by our leaving the EU. Every time she sees Nigel Farage on the television she presumably grabs a tin helmet and jumps into the nearest foxhole.
‘Instead of having one MP we should have two,’ suggested a Cheshire member.
A woman from Runnymede thought MPs should be called ‘local champions’. A chap from Enfield, bald head as flat as Table Mountain, cried that this debate on voting methods was ‘the most Lib Dem moment of my life’. Whereupon the MP for Hazel Grove, Lisa Smart, told them to ‘stop being such massive nerds’. She said it again. ‘Let’s stop being such nerds.’ Were they offended? Don’t be daft. They took it as a compliment.
Tim Farron, former party leader, arrived to conduct a review of the last election. ‘My name’s Tim,’ he said, faux modest.
A succession of local Lib Dem agents and organisers made mini speeches. They were Radio 4 to a tee: prosperous, pukka, white. In an earlier age they’d have been church wardens of the damper Anglican variety. Now they belong to the Church of Tim and Ed. Single-syllable Christian names an advantage.
There was fretting about the Greens, who have wiped out the Lib Dems in some city centres. Greens are younger, less wall-eyed, even more socialist. ‘We need to pivot now and oppose Labour,’ offered a poshie from Oxfordshire, but that found little favour. Lib Dems like Labour; but they are scared of those feral Greens.
Two possible future-leader pitches came from Layla Moran in the Gaza debate – she was a chilly as a bowl of gazpacho – and current deputy leader Daisy Cooper, who spoke about health, mainly her own. She disclosed that she nearly died from Crohn’s disease 12 years ago. The hall listened with sympathetic interest. Ms Cooper is today a picture of toothy fitness, exhaustingly positive. She tried to work some outrage about the NHS into her speech but it did not fly. You can’t denounce opponents if you keep smiling. It was like being told off by a Pilates instructor.