And Lo! We marched upon Bournemouth for the Liberal Democrat Conference, I and my esteemed travelling partner Charlotte Gore – the No. 1 Lib Dem blogger in the world. Our aim was a simple one: that we should thrust ourselves upon this world of Lib Demmery1, drink and be merry, and then in the evening take the conference by storm with a clean sweep at the the Lib Dem Blog of the Year Awards. We were hungry for success – to win would be an honour, a privilege, the political blogosphere’s equivalent of, well, winning an award!

And we came! And we drank! And we… Well, if I’m honest we didn’t exactly conquer. Not at all, really.

On the contrary, in fact, we enjoyed a 100% failure record at the ceremony. One by one the awards flew by, interrupted only by the screaming mad woman who decided that the middle of a bloggers’ awards ceremony was the proper time to have a mental breakdown and scream about how we’re all ‘f***ing hypocrites’. One by one they were handed to highly deserving folk, all of whom were notably not me – nor, indeed, Charlotte.

Particular congratulations are in order, of course, to Mark Reckons and Costigan Quist, the pseudonymous author of the Himmelgarten Café blog, who absolutely wasn’t at the awards party (unless he was).2

And since Mick Fealty of the Slugger O’Toole blog, the eventual winner of the Best Non Lib Dem Political Blog award (the one for which I had been shortlisted) was also not present, having made it to the hotel but not found the correct bar in time, I was permitted to claim the title of ‘Best Non Lib Dem Blogger in the Room’ for myself. I’m not certain what Iain Dale would have to say about that, of course, but it’s good enough for me.

Helen Duffett, whose cheerful smile and twinkling eyes betray her love of her position as the undisputed mother hen of the Lib Dem blogosphere, assured me that the voting in the Non Lib Dem category was very close. I’m quite happy to believe her, for some reason…

Shameless Name-Dropping

As well as immensely enjoying the BOTYs ceremony, I’ve had a really great time at the conference. I’m writing this from the train home where I’m feeling mildly out of place in the First Class section (hey, it was cheaper) and I’m pretty tired and mildly hung over, which suggests I must have been doing something right.

Charlotte has insisted on referring to me as her ‘intern’ throughout, since I’ve been shamelessly following her about and basking in her reflected glory. She has also, to her credit, insisted on introducing me (and plugging my blog) to all of the folks ‘off the telly’ she has access to thanks to her status as ‘No 1 Lib Dem Blogger’.

We had a surreal and entertaining yesterday, consisting largely of ‘celeb’ spotting and shameless name-dropping (‘was that Andrew Neill?! I’ll give you £20 to pull his wig off!’), including sitting at a table for afternoon drinks with Guido Fawkes, Lynne Featherstone, Nick Cohen, Mark Littlewood, Mark Thompson and Sara ‘Loose Canon’ Scarlett (who is doing the ‘Charlotte and Scarlett Show’ now that I’ve left Bournemouth). Oh, and just to complete the round of name dropping, we also spotted Iain Dale – the Blogfather Himself – at a quiet moment and ingratiated ourselves upon him for a while. I’m sure he didn’t mind too much and it was pretty fun chatting with him (if only I’d been taking notes).

Those who had read my blog did have a tendency, upon saying hello, to say ‘I didn’t know you were a Lib Dem’, and look vaguely bemused when I said I wasn’t. Those who had read Charlotte’s blog tended to take great pleasure in pointing out that the one thing she definitely isn’t is a Lib Dem.

After I tweeted as a joke that Charlotte was ‘signing autographs’ at the Marriott, a well-timed appearance by Stephen Glenn asking for bloggers to sign a copy of the Total Politics Guide to Blogging raised a chuckle. Half the Lib Dem blogosphere appeared to be in attendance, and it was great to actually chat (however briefly, in some cases) to Jennie Rigg and Matt Bowles and Ryan Cullen and Stephen Glenn and many many others, all of whom were exceptionally nice, and none of whom held my non-Lib-Dem-at-a-Lib-Dem-conference status against me!

Oh, Is There A Conference Going On?

It wasn’t all about glad-handing, of course – we even attended a fringe event (a whole one); a panel discussion on the expenses crisis featuring Greg Dyke and Paul Staines (Guido Fawkes). A large part of the discussion involved continually pointing out how awfully the various MPs had behaved – a fact which didn’t escape the notice of Lynne Featherstone (one of The Telegraph’s ‘Saintly’ MPs), who made an impassioned defence of her ‘good’ colleagues – but apart from in Guido’s closing comment (“Hands up who thinks Lord Rennard shouldn’t pay back the £42,000 he claimed.”) there was little talk, really, about where the Lib Dems figured into all this.

That discussion was good fun, but I was saddened to learn later that at the exact same moment, elsewhere in the hotel, The Heresiarch himself was in attendance; watching a talk with Simon Singh and Ben Goldacre about libel law. Next time I end up in the same town as one of my absolute favourite independent bloggers, I hope we can manage to meet for a drink!

Even though we only did one fringe event and the conference hall itself sounds like the most crushingly dull experience I can imagine, the fringe and the bars turned out to be surprisingly entertaining and in some ways I quite wish I could have stayed there for the rest of the week.

Thanks!

I’ve got a million and one thoughts in my head now about the conversations I’ve been having (or listening in on) and some stuff I really have to write, but I’ll save that for other posts on other days. I just want to lastly make a special point of saying thank you again to Charlotte, who not only set off at stupid-o’clock on Sunday morning and picked me up from my house to drive down to Bournemouth with me, but also put up with me trailing behind her all day yesterday, and this morning! She really is as much fun offline as she is online and I couldn’t have asked for a better conference companion. So thanks again.

In true Liberal Democrat style, in the end it wasn’t the winning that really mattered…

Oh who am I kidding – WE WOZ ROBBED!

  1. And my goodness there were many Lib Dems around. The only way to stop seeing them was to close your eyes… [↩]
  2. Costigan has now provided yet more proof of the existence of a much-maligned ‘Curse of the BOTYs’ by closing his blog not 24 hours after he was given the grand prize. [↩]