Lib Dem leadership enjoys victory on two key motions… but Cable’s planned no-show causes economy debate jitters

One of the Lib Dem leadership’s key aims for this conference in Glasgow is to move the party into a pragmatic mindset that involves accepting and moving on from certain contentious policies such as tuition fees, the Coalition’s economic policy, and nuclear power. So far that strategy seems to be working, with a number of votes already going in Nick Clegg’s favour. This morning, activists backed a motion on green growth and green jobs that included ‘permitting limited shale gas extraction’, and supported an option within that motion that accepted ‘that in future, nuclear power stations could play a limited role in electricity supply’, rather than ‘rejecting the construction of a new generation of nuclear plant’. Even the leadership were quite surprised that activists were largely happy with these options, even though the debate included impassioned contributions about the alleged dangers of fracking.

And this afternoon, in a continuation of what one supportive MP described to me as ‘the party’s scab-picking’, the conference debated higher education policy, including tuition fees.