I’m off to Harrogate tomorrow for LibDem spring conference. May or may not be able to blog from there.

If you’re going too, please say hello.

LibDem web geeks may interested in this LibDems Online fringe at party conference at 8pm on Saturday night:

Mark Pack and Martin Tod will discuss what we can learn from e-campaigns run during the leadership elections. All three campaigns are already working together to share what they’ve learnt and ensure that we use what we’ve learnt in future Lib Dem campaigning.

Since Martin‘s candidate was the winner (and the campaign website was very good), his experience will be worth hearing, as will those of Richard Huzzey of Bloggers4Chris, and Rob Fenwick, Simon Hughes‘s webmaster, who won’t be there is person but has sent his thoughts.

More details on FlockTogether.

Ming wins.

First round:
Campbell 44.7%
Hughes 23.2%
Huhne 32.1%

Second round:
Campbell 57.9%
Huhne 42.1%

Turnout was a whopping 72%.

The report of the Power Inquiry, to which I submitted written evidence last year, is now available online.

I’ve had a read through the Executive Summary (the whole report is 311 pages) and there’s lots of good stuff.. Those of us who’ve long recognised the need for constitutional reform will not be surprised by many of the sensible recommendations: elections to the House of Lords, lowering the voting age, codifying executive powers. It doesn’t go quite so far as to call for proportional representation for the Commons, but recognises that first-past-the-post has had its day.

Some of the recommendations are rather vague. “Limits should be placed on the power of the whips” isn’t a particularly helpful statement. The reason whips have power is because backbenchers want to stay on the good side of their party leader, in whose gift are (shadow) ministerial posts. The report recognises this but makes no useful proposal to deal with it. Other recommendations are strangely naive. “A new independent National Statistical and Information Service should be created to provide the public with key information free of political spin.” The Office for National Statistics and the National Audit Office will be wondering what they did wrong.

There is one absolute clanger of a recommendation regarding Lords reform:

To ensure that this part of the legislature is not comprised of career politicians with no experience outside politics , candidates should be at least 40 years of age.

My jaw dropped when I read that. In a document which calls for the age at which people can stand for the Commons to be reduced to 16, this is an extremely odd suggestion. Well meaning, certainly, but woefully misguided (and I can hear James Graham muttering the word “gerontocracy” as I type). Apparently David Cameron is old enough to be considered a potential prime minister but too young to sit in the second chamber.

What message does it send to young – or even youngish – people, telling them they are not suitable for one of the two chambers of the national legislature? It is naive to think that this age limit would rule out career politicians: the previous twenty years could be spent in local politics, in the House of Commons, or in political research jobs. If the public doesn’t want political careerists to be elected (just as if the public doesn’t want 16-year-olds in Parliament), it’s the responsibility of the public not to vote for them. That’s how a democracy works.

Trying to rig the system to fill a legislature with the “right sort of people”, however well-intentioned, is utterly undemocratic. An elected House of Lords is an important step forward. Barring half the population from standing for it would be ludicrous.