I keep reading comments which take it as accepted fact that the Bones commission report, and by extension the party leader, is about centralising power within the party and reducing democracy within it.

Now, while this may be the perception of people who haven’t actually followed the report’s progress carefully (and it seems to me at the moment that the number of people who have actually read the report is in inverse proportion to the number who insisted furiously over the summer on their right to read it!) I think anyone has actually read even the summary of it would accept that much of it isn’t about this at all, but about making other, much more operational matters within the party, work better.

But one proposal: the creation of a Chief Officers Group or COG (or in fact more accurately a slight formalisation of this existing loose grouping) does seem to have given to some the impression of greater centralisation. And I accept that on the face of it, there does seem to be a prima facie case here.

But once you actually look at the situation, in fact this isn’t my analysis of this development at all - and I’ll give two reasons why not.

Firstly, the entire Bones report makes no proposals whatsoever about the party’s process for making policy (with the arguable exception of a specific proposal relating to spring conference, which would not affect the fundamentals at all, and I get the impression is now anyway gradually being withdrawn).

The existing process, in which policy is made by conference, and the process is managed and led by an elected Federal Policy Committee (FPC), will continue, just as it does now.

This is important. While the questions of how we run ourselves as a party are obviously important, the reason we are actually in politics is in order to make proposals and change things - or in other words, policy matters. And the decisions about where we stand as a party and what we are proposing, will not be subject to any greater centralisation whatsoever, but will still come to conference just as before.

So to repeat: not one word in the Bones report implies changing the party’s procedures for deciding our policies.

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I’m pretty much a hardliner on the action we need to take to improve representation and engagement of ethnic minorities at senior levels within our party. Quite simply, if we want to aim to be a party of government then we have solve this problem, in our own narrow self-interest as a party - let alone because it is fair and will lead to better governance of Britain. The various ’soft’ strategies we have followed for achieving this - for example to encourage more BME candidates, and support them better, simply haven’t worked. Just take a look at our benches in any Parliament or any party committee. So even if those were the right strategies before, if we want results then we now need to take ‘hard’ action.

I suspect the ‘diversity premium’, through which the Bones commission recommended that any target seat selecting a BME candidate should receive £10K extra, may become something of a test for where people stand on this. I see all the problems with this, but I firmly support it (and I also don’t think that it should be extended also to other under-represented groups too, such as the disabled, for reasons I’d be happy to go into further. I’ve done a lot of work to promote access within the party for people with all kind of disabilities, but basically I think that in this case we have a specific problem with BME candidates which needs to be solved).

One of the many events that I would have liked to get to last week in Bournemouth, but was unable to for simple pressure of having too many of them, was the launch of a new Diversity Engagement Group (DEG). Now, over the last few years, autumn conferences have seen new initiatives launched to get more BME candidates, at a rate of approximately one a year. The teams behind most of them have worked hard, and some have achieved things - I applaud those who have put a lot of effort into them.

But, to be blunt, they haven’t succeeded in cracking the problem. What makes this one different is that it is being led by the party’s Deputy Leader (and indeed current god) Vince Cable. I have high hopes that this will give it a quantum leap higher chance of actually identifying the problems and being able to agree and implement solutions with the relevant people. The fact that Vince is leading sends the right signals that the party leadership has decided that it really does have to take some effective action on this pronto. I look forward to seeing - soon - what it achieves.

Over at Lib Dem Voice, they have launched a campaign against the - well, what to call it? - well, the simply untrue nonsense written about Lib Dem conference by newspapers and broadcasters. I’m very glad that they’ve taken this up and I hope it has an impact.

I still remember vividly my genuine confusion at going home after my first party conference to read the newspapers of it that my parents had kept, and not recognising the event that I’d been at. It felt completely bizarre. Had I really been at a different event? Quite soon, though, and for several years, that turned to frustration and anger that whatever happened at conference - whether we had approved a new overarching policy strategy, or a striking new departure in a particular direction, or anything else, that all that they ever wrote was that the leader’s authority was on the line as they faced a challenge, and that the whole event had been “dominated” by some wildly over-interpreted chance remark made by a senior figure, that almost nobody actually at the conference had even been aware of. These, along with endless obsession with how we related to the other two parties have formed the press’ staple stories ever since about party conference: you can pretty much cut and paste the articles from one year to the next, with just the precise detail of this year’s issue inserted in the blanks.

Finally, I simply came to expect it, and didn’t even really notice it any more. This year was the fifteenth autumn conference that I have attended, and what brought this home to me was reading the very same piece in the Independent that Stephen writes about here, without even really noticing that it talked complete rubbish - it’s simply what I expected now. Only when I saw his piece did I realise what complete nonsense it was, and that he’s absolutely right to be indignant about it. I hope others pick up the general point too and it would be a real achievement if it can get articles written which actually represent what happened at the event.

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I’ve written already about the contest to be the next President of the party, and as anyone who has read that piece will have gathered, I don’t naturally warm to the idea of an Opik presidency.

But before making the choice of how I vote, I would like to hear from the candidates what it is that they would propose to use the job actually to DO.

The formal powers of the party President are certainly not extensive. But it is an opportunity to put some things on the agenda, and take them forward within the party, and within parameters you can have an impact.

Different Presidents have approached it differently. And I certainly think they can be most effective by identifying just one or two main priorities as President. If you spend your two years in that position focussing on one or two big things, then I think you can really put them on the agenda and achieve some progress. Navnit Dholakia achieved this, simply by raising the profile of ethnic minorities within the party. He did this very effectively and I think it is what people remember his Presidency for.

Simon Hughes has approached the role differently - the positive thing that stands out to me most from Simon’s four years has been the way in which he has linked up different parts of the party with each other. The President has an ex officio place on most major party committees, and Simon has very actively engaged in them, and used the linkage which he in that role is able to provide, very positively.

The Bones Commission report seems to me to provide a timely opportunity for the candidates to set out their stall. The remit of its report is so wide that between its covers lie almost every issue that a President might want to take up.

So it would be good to know the candidates’ views on it. Do they support it? If there are some bits they don’t think are quite right, what are they? Which chapters or sections might they really want to take up as priorities?

In some ways its still early days for this election, but in effect it has already been running for a year. It’s time to hear some actual proposals from the candidates!

Over the last year Lembit Opik MP and Baroness (Ros) Scott have been running campaigns for the election which has now finally formally started, to be the next President of the Liberal Democrats.

But the campaigns they have been running have been so different that it really feels more like they have been standing in different elections.

Ros stole a march at autumn conference last year by having her team hand out “I’m 4 Ros” badges before anyone had even really realised there was a presidential election coming up (at that point we didn’t know that we’d have another leadership election to get through before this one!). And she’s spent the year since getting widely around the party, travelling all around the country speaking at regional conference and local party events, starting her own blog and a Facebook group with more than 300 members, writing articles in party publications, and generally getting herself seen as much as possible around the party. I’d say it was a classic good internal party election campaign, and very effectively run by Ros and the man she’s married this year, “party bureaucrat” (his words!) Mark Valladares. CORRECTION: A number of people have been in touch to point out that Ros’ campaign team is in fact this group. Apologies. Anyway, I congratulate them on it!

Lembit’s campaign, on other hand, at least as far as it’s reached my attention, has mostly comprised telling some journalists that he’s planning to stand for the post, resulting in one or two pieces like a full (but not very flattering) profile in the Observer a couple of months ago - combined with his usual round of activities in the party, in his spokesman and Welsh roles, as well of course as his celebrity activities, concluding in the end with the break-up of his engagement to a former Cheeky Girl.

Most people’s view is that of the two, Ros has really done the work to ‘earn’ winning this role.
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Some time ago I was asked to write a short guide to the Liberal Democrat policy process for those wanting to know how it works. After a bit of prodding I did eventually get around to doing it, but the people who’d asked for it then told me it was too detailed!

However I do quite often still get questions about various aspects of the process, so I thought it might be of interest, and have posted it up here. It’s only six pages, and I hope it’s quite clear, as well as comprehensive.

I do get many readers here who are not in the least bit interested in the Liberal Democrats, and clearly this is not very thrilling for you!

But for those who are, I am strongly committed to explaining our party’s internal processes, and highlighting just how open they are, so I hope for such people it may be of interest. I’m happy also to answer any follow-up questions.

I thought anyone going to conference who wondered how the debates at it work, might be interested in this post I wrote just after conference last year, outlining how debates get structured and how speakers are selected for them. Many people do seem to believe that whether or not you get called depends mostly on whether in the bar last night you were rude to the person chairing the session - so it may still be a surprise to some to see that it is in fact somewhat more scientific than that!

This autumn, conference representatives will elect members of the major committees responsible for running the party. If you have strong views that we should do things differently, then why don’t you stand? We are a democratic organisation, but our decisions will only reflect what members actually want if people do put themselves forward.

Information about the elections has now been published, and the deadline for nominations is 24 September. You only have to get two voting conference representatives to support you, and you don’t even have to be a conference rep yourself to stand.

Of course actually standing for election is not for everyone - I’m very aware that it does require a time commitment which is not everyone is able to give, particularly if you live a long way from London. But in that case please make sure you ask your local party voting representatives how they plan to vote, and of course if you are a voting conference rep yourself, do use this once-in-every-two-years opportunity to question candidates about what they will do. And of course if they’re already members of the committee, challenge them about what they do on it - and give them your own views. As a candidate in recent years I have received perhaps one or two requests for my views in each election - I’d like to see voters using the opportunity much more to question candidates. Several candidates put their contact details at the bottom of their manifesto - do use them!

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