BBC News 24 was reporting this morning that there will be a row over tax at this conference, and that Ming Campbell has denied the vote would of confidence in the leadership. He is right.

Much as this week is a nice holiday by the sea, we come down to debate real policy issues. The complaint levelled, fairly, against Labour and the Tories is that there is no real debate at their party conferences and the patry memberships only have a limited say. The Liberal Democrats are not like that – we’re a democratic party and we make policy together. Is it any wonder, though, that the other parties don’t risk this when substantive policy debate is repeatedly characterised as being about the media’s favourite subject, personalities.

When we debate the 50p tax rate amendment (which is an addition to, not a replacement for, Ming’s tax plan), we will deal with the substantive issue. Of course there will be disagreements: there is no absolute right or wrong on this. We will agree a position democratically, arguing which case is best for the party and, more importantly, for the country. Talk of the debate being a referendum on the leadership isn’t helpful and isn’t true.

If we always agreed on policy, there would be little point having a party conference.

Here I am again on the seafront, waiting this morning for the conference centre to open so I can, erm, go on teh internets. (And having written this on the seafront I have time travelled forward through the magic of waiting and am now editing it in the conference centre.)

Have just stuffed my face with a farmhouse breakfast, putting to rest any lingering after effects from last night. After a couple of trips to the LDYS Race Night, punctuated by popping out for chips, I enjoyed a couple more pints in the hotel bar. Then we went on to a mod club at the Royal Pavilion Tavern, where I switched to alcopops, danced a bit and sat at a table free associating (not on my own, you understand). There was too much soul music for my liking, but I deigned to swing my pants for The Jam, The Beatles and The Clash. Annoyingly, the venue’s “classic” indie night is on Fridays, so no chance to go this week.

Light agenda for today. Will pop along to the Liberal Democrats Online AGM at lunchtime. The highlight of today is, of course, the Bloggers’ Reception, featuring the eagerly anticipated Blog of the Year Award. (I ran into deservingly shortlisted blogger Stephen Tall on the beach last night, and Alex Wilcock in the bar who reported that Millennium Elephant was having a quiet night in. I have my doubts he would have got served in the bar anyway. But I digress.)

This is nice.

Arrived in Brighton an hour ago, checked into my hotel with no problem (although apparently the water will be off most of Monday…), popped to the conference hotel and ran into Rob, who pointed me in the right direction to collect a badge holder and lanyard. Now sitting on the beach, reading some blogs and taking in the sea air. Lovely.

On Saturday afternoon, I popped into the conference hall just in time to see Baroness Ludford MEP storm the stage (I exaggerate a little). From there, to a meeting in the bar, and then to an excellent LibDems Online fringe meeting. There were some great online campaigning tips discussed, and hopefully many of them will be used on the national party website for future elections. For obvious reasons, I’m not going to detail those tips here 🙂 It was a pleasure to see the party demonstrating how innovative it can be. It was also great to hear the panellists praising LibDem Blogs, for which we all remain very grateful to Ryan.

On Sunday, I was in the hall for Ming’s speech. His call for the party to be more professional was particularly appropriate, coming as it did after moments the microphone of the man introducing him failed. It was a solid, encouraging speech. My personal highlight was when Ming rightly complained about the over-centralisation of governance in Britain:

“It is absurd that if a hospital operation goes wrong the first democratically elected person in the chain of responsibility is the Secretary of State for Health.”

On the other side of the hall, I saw that David Howarth, who was gesticulating at Chris Huhne, had noticed the same thing as me: that this was lifted straight from the speeches Huhne gave throughout the leadership election. It remains an important point and it’s good to see Ming taking on board some of the issues that we raised in the contest.

(Ironically, of course, while it applied to Chris Huhne’s hospital in Eastleigh, it doesn’t apply to Ming’s in Edinburgh – thanks to devolution, the situation is marginally less centralised and the line of accounability leads to the Health Minister in the Scottish Executive.)

Much of the talk around conference was on Ming’s first reshuffle, which has now begun, with many delegates playing fantasy shadow cabinet (James has a tip for Michael Moore’s replacement at defence). Nothing particularly surprising in the appointments so far. One frontbencher who didn’t back Ming during the leadership election confided in me on Saturday night that, as you’d expect, they were waiting to see how Ming would reward the other candidates’ backers. The MP in question, who will remain nameless, had also decided to turn down their current role if offered it again.

All in all, despite some organisational issues and a pretty sparse agenda, conference was good fun. Caught up with friends, and met some new people, including various bloggers. Hopefully I’ll be able to afford (in both time and money) Brighton conference in the autumn.