Liberal Democrats - Meeting the Challenge

7.20.00pm GMT Sat 14th Jan 2006

The "meeting the challenge" web site front page

The Liberal Democrats today held their 'Meeting the Challenge' Conference. The Meeting the Challenge project is an overarching policy review following the 2005 General Election, it has been open to members of the Liberal Democrats and also members of the general public to participate in.

The Meeting the Challenge project is designed to look forward, not back - making sure that party policy is suited to the challenges of the next ten to twenty years, creating a coherent framework into which policy-making for the rest of the parliament will fit, and bringing the policy and campaigning elements of the party much closer together.

The next General Election, due probably in 2009, will present the Liberal Democrats with the kind of opportunity they have not faced for eighty years. This year's election has set a solid framework for major advances next time. The Liberal Democrats have a larger parliamentary party than at any time since 1923 and more second places than at any time since the 1980s. Three-party politics is firmly entrenched, with a narrower spread of votes between the main three parties than at any time since 1929.