Attacking other cabinet ministers, Mr Kennedy carefully avoided any criticism of Mr Blair.He reserved most condemnation for William Hague, saying he should “grow up” in his approach to the Northern Ireland peace process. Mr Kennedy tried to draw a line under the divisions caused by the leadership election and to move away from his popular image as the game show guest – joking about his appearances on Have I Got News for You? and Call My Bluff – to a leader with a serious political agenda.He was so nervous about his performance that he went through a full dress rehearsal in the conference hall late at night on the eve of his address, while his party was celebrating.He continued with amendments to the text late yesterday, but the four main themes – to be repeated in the general election – had been well trailed: a greater commitment than the other parties to the euro, green issues, higher spending on public services, and “fair voting” for local elections. I’m eager.”In a move to reassure Tony Blair that the Liberal Democrats are a more disciplined, mature party than in the past, Mr Kennedy also announced moves to limit the influence of the activists on party policy, by opening internal policy committees to selection by one-member, one-vote.After a week in which his defeated rival for the leadership, Simon Hughes, led criticism of his ability to formulate policy, his speech could be seen as a missed opportunity to lay out new policy initiatives. The 21st can be a century of Liberal Democracy.” In an echo of Sir David Steel’s speech more than a decade ago, where as the party leader he urged activists to go back to their constituencies and prepare for government, Mr Kennedy said: “I’m ready for it I know you are. Mr Kennedy swept aside their objections, making clear he would not rule out co-operation with ministers, although he assured the party that an extension of the co-operation with the Government would only take place “if our policies are implemented, if you, the party, consents, and if we remain independent”.Having promised that a formal coalition with Labour is not part of his agenda, Mr Kennedytold delegates the “20th century was too much a Conservative century. Let us go and make a success of it together,” he said.
The prospect of coalition government with a seat in the Cabinet will upset many grassroots activists who protested this week at closer links with Labour. In a moving ending to his first big conference speech as Liberal Democrat leader, Mr Kennedy appealed to the party to trust him, describing his election as the “chance of a lifetime” “Politically for us, it is the chance of a generation Thank you from the bottom of my heart I won’t let you down.

CHARLES KENNEDY ignored the critics in his party yesterday and set the Liberal Democrats on course to join a Blair Government after the next election. He made clear he had no intention of ruling out further co-operation with the Government, which must leave open the possibility that the joint cabinet committee will have its remit extended.And he left little doubt that he is a practical politician eager for power and convinced that coalition with Labour is the only sensible route to it He could hardly have been more realistic than that.. Mr Kennedy re-identified the Tories as the Liberal Democrats’ political opponents. I’m sure there’s quite a lot of you.”That said, for all its easy personal amiability, this was an effective performance from a leader asserting his grip on his party, clear about where he wanted to go.His style is different from Mr Ashdown’s but the strategic direction does not look so different.

Most of them, from his opening words, “Have I got news for you” were very good. It was probably tactful, given his sharp message about reducing the power of conference activ-ists, that he left out one of the best: “Now a word for our trainspotters in the audience. He revived the dormant commitment to local income tax to replace the council tax. While avoiding specifics, he repeated unequivocally that the public services rather than tax cuts should be the object of Gordon Brown’s pre-election largesse. But he was equally unequivocal in saying there was no future for the party in the territory to the left of Labour.He made no effort to appease the sizeable Euro- sceptic minority of the party’s supporters in his firm declaration that to be pro-Euro was to be patriotic.One of the most effective passages, oddly, was a self-deprecating ad lib.He said that parliament, including the opposition parties, had been as much to blame as the government of the day for the appalling shambles, however well intended, of the Child Support Agency, whose victims subsequently filled the Saturday morning constituency surgeries of the MPs who by their negligence had visited this disaster on them.Charles Kennedy is probably the only European party leader who writes his own jokes.

Charles Kennedy re-ferred twice to the national political “conversation”, and conversing was just what he seemed to be doing for most of the 51 minutes he was at the rostrum yesterday. But the audience left, if not ecstatic, happy despite Mr Kennedy deliberately eschewing Mr Ashdown’s visionary rhetoric.
This was the more remarkable since Mr Kennedy did not play that much to the activist gallery in the hall.In particular he confronted his audience, early in his speech, with his plan to wrench the task of electing the main policy committees of the party from the unrepresentative ranks of those who attend the conference and give it to the wider membership.This is not quite Clause IV, but it is a bold and important modernising change which should help to make the party’s pronouncements more realistic – and perhaps reduce their number.He delighted the party by being fully liberal in backing gays in the military and a Royal Commission exploring the legalisation of cannabis. We want to be a beacon for human rights in a beacon country for human rights.”. IT WAS almost an anti-speech, more a fireside chat than the kind of dizzying, inspirational concept building with which Paddy Ashdown used to challenge and bewitch his party. Delegates passed proposals to tackle child slavery and the use of children for prostitution and pornography. Supporting the motion, Liz Lynne, the party’s MEP for the North West region, said at the moment 250 million children were being used for labour worldwide.
But Dr Jenny Tongue, the MP for Richmond Park, and the party’s international development spokesman, warned that sanctions against such countries could be counter-productive.However, Sharon Bowles, who moved the motion, told delegates: “There is a time for diplomacy, but not here.

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS toughened their approach to child labour yesterday, calling for sanctions to be imposed on countries that tolerated such practices. “Good?” may be good enough for the moment – but Mr Kennedy will have to do better if he wants to excite his party, rather than just impress it.. But as delegates murmured “good” to each other as they filed from the hall, there was an interrogatory lilt to the word, which told you they were checking, not asserting. But it did not have a clearly discernible plot and he didn’t cover that lack with his voice, pulling his listeners steadily upwards to a final capping peroration which would send them out thrilled and a little vertiginous at the height they’d been lead to.He is good at treating the audience as intimates, far less practised at treating them as a crowd, a mass to be swayed as one.He got his standing ovation, naturally. so many potential members of the House of Lords.”Mr Kennedy’s speech had a lot of sentences Short sentences Passionate and decent sentences It had jokes too and quite smart ones at times. But Mr Kennedy had clearly decided that it was unwise to tackle this challenge in his very first sentence.
Better to work up to it, as more experienced party-leaders do, with a few self-deprecating jokes (“Well, have I got news for you”) and a bit of friendly banter: “This is for me a unique audience,” he said, voice thick with mock gravity, “I have never addressed…