GUEST POST Why we need an emergency Lib Dem special conference this year

Ed Davey, party members and Britain as a whole need a Liberal Democrat emergency special conference, argues David Evans.

In less than 26 minutes last Friday Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng took an axe to what remains of the British economy and to the hopes and prospects of so many people, and totally destroyed the last vestiges that the Conservatives are the party of Economic competence.

By the end of the day the pound had crashed over 4 per cent in value (and is still falling) and the FTSE a further 2 per cent, undermining the savings, pensions, and prospects of workers, the retired and the unemployed, be they teachers, doctors, farmers, workers in industry or workers in entertainment.  It affects them all.

Earlier this month, the Liberal Democrats' federal board and federal conference committee had decided to completely cancel the party's annual conference and put everything on hold until Spring conference is held In York next March.  

While the decision that it would be seen to be inappropriate to hold conference during the period leading up to the Queen’s funeral was justified, it was misguided to think that the Lib Dems, as a party, should have no opportunity to say anything about the new prime minister and her deeply damaging new ideas for six months.

Every Lib Dem who met Liz Truss when she was, temporarily, a member of our party seems to have quickly formed the view that she had an eye for self-publicity and an extremely radical view on things. But it wasn’t a Liberal Democrat view, as she quickly found out when they began to question the reasoning behind her vision.

Everyone who works in business knows that real growth and progress comes slowly, and need careful planning and sustained amounts of effort over years and sometimes decades. The desire for a quick fix, a dash for growth based on throwing vast amounts of borrowed money at its supporters, underpinned by a total lack of understanding of simple economic realities is no substitute for hard work and effort.

Sacking a permanent secretary on Day One and calling the most outrageous gamble with our nation’s economy "a fiscal event" in order to avoid Office of Budget Responsibility scrutiny shows linguistic cunning that Vladimir Putin would be proud of. 

We all know that our party has a proud record of economic competence thanks to Vince and his spell as secretary of state for business, innovation and skills - a time when he actually got industry leaders talking to each other and dealing with the fundamental issues they faced.  He even started to develop a proper industrial strategy, something the UK hasn’t had since the 1970s.  

However, we can’t expect Ed and his few close advisers to develop and make a case for a radically different Lib Dem solution to Conservative incompetence on their own in a five-minute slot on the BBC between coverage of the Labour Party Conference and the sports news.

He needs the support of the whole party and help from party members to develop a radical Liberal Democrat alternative to this Tory-created crisis, and a forum that will cut through into the national media, so we can present these to the country.  

We can only do this by being more wide ranging, radical and comprehensively better in our proposals, and to do this he, and we, need a conference.

But we don’t need yet another set of deadly dull Lib Dem policy motions that simply say

1. Conference notes - Things are bad.
2. Conference believes - Things should be better.
3. Conference further notes – The Government are responsible for this mess.
4. Conference reaffirms – Everything we ever said about this in the past, that the government still hasn’t done.
5. Conference calls on – The Government to magically change its mind and do what we want.

When what need to get cut through is

• This is the solution and Lib Dems Commit to do everything it can in government to sort it all out

Currently there are good Lib Dems working on a solution to these problems, but to make it successful we need a federal conference to give it the publicity it needs.

So in summary

1. I note - Things are bad.
2. I believe - Things can be made much better.
3. I further note – That we have better solutions but we need to promote, debate and agree them, quickly.
4. I reaffirm – That we need to hold this government responsible for the mess
5. I call on - the federal conference committee and federal board to convene an emergency special conference later this year to allow these to be discussed
6. To make sure this happens - Every Lib Dem who cares about our country’s future and our party’s continuing relevance should formally request that the party call an emergency special conference later this year, in accordance with Section 6.3 of the party’s constitution, to discuss our solution to the economic crisis that the Conservative Party has unleased on the British people.

David Evans is a lifelong Liberal and Liberal Democrat.