Today I attended the special conference of Liberal Democrat members at the NEC. It was organised a few days ago when the coalition with the Tories was being negotiated. Under the Lib Dem Constitution any coalition has to be approved by strong majorities of 2 out of 3 of the parliamentary party, the federal executive and a meeting of conference representatives (of which I am one) of the membership. As the first two of these had approved the coalition, with just one vote against, the membership conference was unnecessary. However given the momentus events of the past week, the party leadership took the wise view that it was important to let the membership have a full debate about the issues anyway.

The conference was conducted in closed session (i.e. without the press) with the idea of allowing everyone to have their say without being contsrained by the thought that criticism would be seen as disloyalty. This was a shame as the conference was so united in its support of the deal and the debate was of a very high standard. At the end I counted 30 hands at most going up against the deal, from the 2,000 or so attendees.

The few speakers that did make the case against the coalition, were listened to with respect. They all said that they would stay in the party, which was welcome but not too suprising – the Lib Dems are, after all, the only viable home for liberals in our political system. I gather that in the few days since the deal was announced, about 250 have left the party and 750 have joined.

Some of the key points in the debate were:

1) While we tried to engage with the Labour Party, they really weren’t interested in a deal. They were unwilling to compromise on policy and many of their leaders had clearly taken the view that they would be better off regrouping in opposition.

2) We really do have a true partnership government – the policy agreement is full of Liberal Democrat policies and we have a good share of government posts. On policy, while we don’t have everything we wanted, we have achieved a government that will be more redistributive than Labour on taxation, will sweep away many of the constraints on civil liberties imposed since 9/11, and will adopt the greenest policies yet seen in the UK. Whats more there will be a major programme of political reform, including fixed term parliaments, a referendum on the Alternative Vote voting system and the creation of a House of Lords mainly elected by Proportional Representation.

3) The decisive point from a political perspective is that as Lib Dems, we have been arguing for a more pluralistic political system, in which parties co-operate much more. Given this is what we believe in, we can hardly back out of such a good deal and slink off to the purity of the opposition benches. Of course the coalition is a risk, but if you don’t take risks in politics you are condemned to obscurity.

It will be a bumpy ride  – especially when the government is making the tough spending cuts needed to address the huge budget deficit, Labour have left us with – but we start with a united party, determined to see it succeed, above all because we think its the right thing for Britain.