8.40am: This may be premature, and it probably won't go down well with some of the readers who post comments on this site, but I think it's true and so I'll say it anyway. The Lib Dem have been in Liverpool for two days and, from Nick Clegg's perspective, it has up until now all been going rather well. Journalists came to Merseyside looking for an anti-coalition revolt. (Journalists are always looking for a revolt; it's just what they do.) But – so far – the party has been pretty loyal. If the only rebels speaking out are people like David Rendel, Sandra Gidley and Evan Harris, Clegg does not have much to worry about.

Today things could get a bit more tricky. The Lib Dems are debating a motion saying that they are "concerned by the establishment of academies and free schools under coalition policy". This is probably David Cameron's most cherished proposed public sector reform. But, as my colleague Jeevan Vasagar reports, some Lib Dem activists hate it. The debate will illuminate the division between the leadership and the Lib Dem grassroots. But it will also show that there's still a difference between the Lib Dems and the Tories, which is a message that Clegg's party might find reassuring. Clegg himself will be delivering his leader's speech this afternoon.

Here's a timetable.

9am: Conference opens with a debate on "facing the future".

11am: Lib Dems debate the motion on free schools and academies. The vote will come at around 12.20pm.

1pm: Charles Kennedy, Chris Huhne and Labour's Lord Adonis debate the future of politics at a Guardian fringe.

2.30pm: Debate on green taxation.

4.15pm: Nick Clegg's speech.

I'll be covering all these events, as well as bringing you breaking news, going through the papers and brining you the best conference comment from the web.

8.58am: The Lib Dems do not have any ethnic minority representatives in the House of Commons, the European parliament, the Scottish parliament or the Welsh assembly. At a fringe meeting last night Nick Clegg said that this was a source of "great regret" to him and that the party was in the "last chance saloon" when it came to improving its diversity.

I feel is is an inescapable duty on us as a party to be more diverse in the way we are represented ... I would like to say at this stage is that it is not a small technical matter, how we select our candidates, it is not dry, exotic corner of the procedural debates of the last day. It is absolutely fundamental to the kind of liberal, diverse party that we should be and that bluntly we are not.

It is a source of genuine regret to me - and I share in this responsibility as much as anybody else - that we have a parliamentary party that is unrepresentative of modern Britain and that must change.

I have changed my own mind on this quite considerably: I was always quite hostile - for all the good reasons we have heard before - of interventionist ways of changing the representation of our party, even on a one-off basis. I think we are now really in the last chance saloon on this.

On Wednesday the party will debate plans to ensure that there has to be at least one ethnic minority candidate on the shortlist when the party selects candidates in winnable seats. Clegg used to be opposed to measures of this kind, but now he has changed his mind.

9.19am: Lord Ashdown, the former Lib Dem leader, strongly defended Nick Clegg's decision to join a coalition with the Tories on the Today programme this morning.

Nick had the right judgment on this and I support him fully, completely and energetically ... If the Liberal Democrats had not gone into coalition, the consequences for the party would have been worse, the risk for our party would have been greater, the benefit for our country would have been fantastically diminished.

On the same programme Simon Hughes, the deputy party leader, said that motions passed at Lib Dem conference will influence government policy.

For the first time ever, motions passed at our conference are relevant in influencing our party in government ... We can stop things happening, because this is not a government where you have a second, smaller partner looking after a bit [of it] - this is a government where all the decisions are shared.

9.24am: Here's some more Lib Dem discontent. PoliticsHome (paywall) was listening to Bob Russell, the Colchester MP, on Radio 5 Live this morning. This is what he said.

I agreed to the coalition through gritted teeth. It was basically the only realistic option in the national interest and I'm battling for the things I believe in.

9.44am: Last night the Lib Dems released some extracts from Clegg's speech. Here they are.

On why he went into coalition with the Tories:

Some say we shouldn't have gone into government at a time when spending had to be cut. We should have let the Conservatives take the blame. Waited on the sidelines, ready to reap the political rewards. Maybe that's what people expected from a party that has been in opposition for 65 years. People have got used to us being outsiders, against every government that's come along. Maybe we got used to it ourselves. But the door to the change we want was opened, for the first time in most of our lifetimes. Imagine if we had turned away. How could we ever again have asked the voters to take us seriously?



On the future of the Lib Dems:

The Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives are and always will be separate parties, with distinct histories and different futures. But for this parliament we work together to fix the problems we face and put the country on a better path. This is the right government for right now.

That phrase "and different futures" is significant. It's Clegg's way of ruling out a merger.

And here's Clegg on tax evasion:

We all agree it's wrong when people help themselves to benefits they shouldn't get. But when the richest people in the country dodge their tax bill that is just as bad. Both come down to stealing money from your neighbours. We will be tough on welfare cheats. But unlike Labour, we'll be tough on tax cheats too.

9.56am: We've now got a new contender for the title of "most outspoken Lib Dem rebel". Mike Hancock, the MP for Portsmouth South, is not at the conference. But he has given an interview to Peter Henley, the BBC's political reporter for the south of England, and he has told Henley that he has written a letter to Nick Clegg asking him to "end the dictatorship" of his ministers over the party. Hancock has also accused Clegg of "abandoning a key aspect of Liberal Democrat policy" by supporting plans for welfare cuts.

This is what Hancock told the BBC:

I'm already struggling myself on so many issues. At the moment I don't see the defining of policies clearly so that people understand. People have very long memories. I remember the Winter of Discontent - rubbish piling up in the street and the dead going unburied. I don't want to see us indiscriminately hack into benefits and the innocent suffer along with the guilty. We will have to work very, very hard indeed to convince people that the coalition is working and at the present time I don't think we're doing that successfully.

Hancock also said that holding the referendum on the alternative vote next May would be a big mistake.

One year after an election, having to make very painful decisions that are affecting the whole nation, this is the first time that people get to show their resentment at what's happened and you are asking them to change the voting system. I just think that it is a gift to our opponents and we will live to regret it.

10.35am: Michael Moore has resigned as deputy leader of the Scottish Lib Dems, the BBC reports, because he wants to concentrate on his job as Scottish secretary.

10.42am: You can read today's Guardian politics stories here. And the stories filed yesterday, including some that are in today's paper, are here.

As for the rest of the papers, here are the Lib Dems articles that I thought were particularly worth noting.

• Lord Rennard, the former Lib Dem chief executive, says in the Financial Times (subscription) that Nick Clegg needs to find policy areas to push that "do not threaten the coalition agreement but allow him to show distinctiveness from both the other main parties".

Trident was a good "wedge" issue for the Liberal Democrats in the general election and it remains one today. Many Conservative voters are anxious about such large sums going to something of questionable value to the country's defences. Lib Dem opposition also scores well with traditional Labour supporters, who disapproved of the last Labour government's positioning of itself with Tory hawks.

The Liberal Democrats did well in Scotland when they formed a coalition with Labour in 1999 by getting the credit for the abolition of student tuition fees. If a similar way can now be found to prevent students from poorer backgrounds deciding that they cannot afford to go to university, this would again be seen as a Lib Dem success. It is also something that Labour would find hard to oppose.

• Sam Coates and Roland Watson in the Times (paywall) say that Nick Clegg is going to ensure that prisoners get the right to vote.

Nick Clegg's officials said last night that the blanket ban on Britain's 88,000 prisoners taking part in elections cannot continue. The Deputy Prime Minister took responsibility for the issue from Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, in July. Britain is under pressure to act because of a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights and criticism from the Council of Europe. Prisoners are now being encouraged to sue the Government and receive up to £750 each in compensation. Mr Clegg's team is examining how far up the sentence scale to extend the new right. His spokeswoman said: "There needs to be a change to the current situation in the light of the court cases but we don't support the blanket rights for prisoners to vote."

• Mary Ann Sieghart in the Independent says Clegg wields disproportionate influence over the government.



If, as leader of a minority party, you agree to run a department, you become too distracted to wield much influence over the rest of government policy. If you are Foreign Secretary, it's worse still, as you are out of the country for much of the time. Cameron kept offering Clegg jobs during the coalition negotiations, but Clegg knew that he didn't want a department of his own and refused even to discuss jobs for himself and his colleagues until the very end, after Gordon Brown resigned. He realised that it would be too easy to be bought off with Cabinet seats at the expense of Lib Dem policies. The outcome is that the leader of a party with only 57 parliamentary seats has disproportionate influence on government. Clegg played a relatively weak hand well and – if his party is patient – has a good chance of turning this Coalition to his advantage. It's too easy to make lazy predictions like "the Coalition can't last" or "the Lib Dems will be subsumed." Politics have been transformed since May and we have to reassess our old prejudices. There is one glaring fact that the old Westminster lags have missed: the Coalition is likely to last the course because the only party that would gain from it being wrecked is Labour.

• The Daily Telegraph says the midddle classes could be subject to lie detector tests as part of Nick Clegg's plans for a clampdown on tax evasion.

• And the The Daily Mail says Clegg has a two-pronged attack on the better-off yesterday, announcing a crackdown on tax avoidance and signalling the axe for middle class benefits.

Mike Hancock MP Photograph: Guardian

11.08am: Mike Hancock has posted the full text of his letter to Nick Clegg (pdf) (see 9.56am) on his website. As he explains in a website post, he believes that any government policy not covered by the coalition agreement should be subject to the party's "triple lock". In other words, activists should effectively have a veto. Hancock says he voted against the VAT increase and the academies bill because they were not approved in this way. This meant they were unconstitutional, he suggests.

If Nick wants to change the party's constitution then he should bring forward the appropriate motions to conference, otherwise he should abide by it.

In his letter Hancock admits that leading the Lib Dems is like "herding cats" and he rules out defecting to Labour (saying that if Dennis Skinner could remain in New Labour, he will remain in the Lib Dems.) He says some warm things about Clegg's leadership. But he also attacks the government's welfare policies, and says that if Clegg thinks benefits are too high, he should try living on them for a month.

11.29am: The debate on free schools and academies has started. Peter Downes, a Lib Dem councillor who is moving the motion, has just finished proposing the motion expressing concern about the government's policies. He said that he was "not seeking to rock the coalition boat". But he also wanted to make it clear that academies and free schools are "incompatible with the basic principles of Liberal Democrat education policy". They are "divisive, costly and unfair", he said. These plans "are on the statute book and on the shelf", he said. "That's where they should remain."

Downes's motion calls on "all Liberal Democrats to urge people not to take up [the free school or academy option]". Downes said that he was not calling for "hysterical boycotts"; he just wanted "sensible debate". But if this motion goes through unamended, the Lib Dems as a party will be committed to encouraging people not to set up free schools and academies even though they voted for legislation making it easier for people to do just this. That is not entirely illogical. But it would take some explaining.

A Lib Dem peer, Lady Walmsley, and an MP, Dan Rogerson, have tabled an amendment taking out the "urge people not to take up this option" clause. Instead, it talks about the Lib Dems noting "the potential risks to local communities" that free school and academies pose. If this amendment gets accepted, the motion (if it gets approved) will be marginally less embarrasing to the leadership.

Downes has written a piece for Comment is Free explaining his argument in more detail.

Sarah Teather MP Photograph: Guardian

11.50am: Sarah Teather, the Lib Dem eduction minister, has just spoken. She said that she was opposed to the motion "as drafted" (ie, the original Downes version, without the amendment) and she urged delegates to vote against it. She did not make it particularly clear as to whether or not she would approve the motion if the main amendment were to go through.

She told the conference that she was opposed to Downes's text because what he said about a boycott was "fundamentally illiberal".

Councils have to be able to use every tool that is available to them to improve the life chances for their children. If the best way to solve a local problem is to work with the government of the day, this conference should not stand in their way. Please don't vote for a boycott. Don't tie our councillors' hands. Please vote down the motion.

12.03pm: It's a lively debate. They have now opened it up to the floor, and we're getting speeches lasting one minute each. It seems fairly likely that the motion will go through. But it is very hard to tell whether the Walmsley/Rogerson amendment (see 11.29am) will go through.

(The Walmsley/Rogerson amendment is amendment two. There is another one, but it's less important.)

Evan Harris, the former Lib Dem MP, spoke after Sarah Teather (see 11.50am) and he said he was "astonished" to hear her "urge people not to take up this option" as illiberal.

When is it illiberal for our party, determining policy independently, to call on Liberal Democrats to call on other people to do something that we agree with. That is what being in politics involves. It is not illegal. And it isn't even calling for a boycott. And that also wouldn't be illiberal. So lines 16 and 17 [ie, the original text] must stay if we are to support local campaigning.

12.05pm: The BBC is running a good Lib Dem conference live blog. They've had a steer on something Nick Clegg is going to say in his speech this afternoon.

Nick Clegg is to outline new ways of councils raising money as an antidote to cuts, the BBC understands. In his keynote speech this afternoon he will announce a plan to allow councils to borrow against future projected income. This could theoretically release hundreds of millions of pounds of income for councils around the country. Gordon Brown always resisted this idea when he was at the Treasury.

12.14pm: Dan Rogerson, MP for North Cornwall, is winding up the debate. He says that his amendment (which takes out the "urge people not to take up this option" clause) would not stop Evan Harris campaigning for what he believes in.

12.29pm: The Lib Dem leadership has suffered a significant defeat. The Walmsley/Rogerson amendment has been "clearly lost". And the main motion (plus another minor amendment, saying that the extension of free schools and academies would increase the amount of discrimination on religious grounds) has been carried overwhelmingly.

This means that Nick Clegg now has to explain why his party is committed to campaigning against the expansion of academies, even though Lib Dem MPs voted for the legislation allowing this expansion to happen. Confused? That's democracy for you.

At one level it is hugely embarrassing, because it makes the party look a bit daft. But it will have no effect on legislation that has already been passed and it is hard to know whether it will have any effect on the way academies and free schools are rolled out in the future. (It is conceivable that Michael Gove may decide to proceed a bit more cautiously because of this vote, but more likely that he will decide to take no notice.) On the plus side, Nick Clegg will be able to cite this as clear proof that the Lib Dems have not become a pale-blue offshoot of the Conservative party.

Danny Alexander told the Liberal Democrats' conference that the Treasury would be 'ruthless with wealthy individuals and business who think paying extra tax is an optional extra'. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

12.42pm: Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury, has told the BBC that the vote on free schools and academies will make no difference to government policy.

1.10pm: Here is a lunchtime summary.

• Lib Dem activists have chosen to flex their muscles by voting overwhelmingly in favour of committing their party to campaigning against free schools and the extension of academies. This is an embarrassment for Nick Clegg and the party leadership. Delegates ignored Sarah Teather, the education minister, who told them that what they were voting for was "fundamentally illiberal" when she spoke in the debate. The vote will have little, if any, practical effect on government policy, but it means that the Lib Dems have been able to assert their identity and it will probably cheer the delegates immensely.

• A Lib Dem MP has complained about the party leadership operating as a "dictatorship". In an open letter to Nick Clegg, Mike Hancock also accused the deputy prime minister of acting in a way that was unconstitutional because the government has adopted policies that have not been approved by the party. (See 9.56am and 11.08am.)

• Prison campaigners have welcomed the news that Clegg wants to give some prisoners the right to vote. He has made it clear that Britain will finally comply with a long-standing European court of human rights ruling saying that the ban on all prisoners is illegal. Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said: "Foot-dragging will no longer be tolerated by the Council of Europe which has given the coalition government just three months to comply with the outstanding court judgment and, at last, overturn the outdated and counterproductive ban on prisoners' voting. (See 10.42am.)

1.24pm: I'm at the Guardian fringe and, after a bit of struggle, I've finally persuaded my laptop to talk to the internet. We're in a room the size of an aircraft hangar and it's packed. I suspect many people came to hear Charles Kennedy, but he has not been able attend. Chris Huhne and Lord Adonis are also on the panel (and they're here) and Jo Swinson is standing in for Kennedy.

Huhne opened with an entertaining blast at political correspondents, who, he said, were only surprised by the success of the Lib Dems because they were too innumerate to understand the psephological trends that have seen the third party vote steadily increasing over the last 40 years. He also dismissed the idea that being in coalition would end up with the Lib Dems being swallowed up by the Tories. Just look at Scotland, he said, where being in coalition didn't harm the Lib Dems.

Adonis, who now heads the Institute for Government, said he did not accept Huhne's claim that liberalism was the only -ism still relevant. Social democracy is still going strong, he said.

1.42pm: Just having internet problems, but will post again as soon as possible. Sorry about this.

2.12pm: I've bailed out of the fringe. My internet connection was about as reliable as Charles Kennedy. It was a shame, because it was getting quite spiky. One member of the audience asked Chris Huhne how Lib Dems could expect to win in the local elections next May with the spending cuts just coming in. Huhne said, essentially, that the Lib Dems were always good at campaigning locally and that they should not worry too much. One of the delegates sitting next to me declared, rather loudly, that Huhne was talking rubbish.

In the meantime, I see that Sarah Teather has been responding to the conference vote. This is what she said.

The motion restates existing party policy. The Liberal Democrats are an open and democratic party and it is right the members should express their views on government policy. Our members respect that in a coalition government, some of the policies that go forward will be Conservative ones and some will be Liberal Democrat ones and some will be a blend of the two. Compromise is inevitable and healthy. As well as free schools and academies, the government is introducing a pupil premium to give extra funding to schools taking the poorest pupils, a key Lib Dem manifesto commitment.

Ed Balls, the shadow schools secretary: 'Once again we have clear evidence that the victims of the ... unfair and economically dangerous cuts are the poorest and those in most need.' Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

2.17pm: Ed Balls has put out a statement about the Lib Dem education vote.

This is another blow for the coalition's unpopular, flawed and deeply unfair school reforms. Lib Dem members have said loud and clear that they won't be fooled by hollow rhetoric from either Nick Clegg or Michael Gove. While Lib Dem Ministers claim to have secured a pupil premium to compensate for the worst effects of the coalition's school reforms, they have absolutely nothing to show for it. It is not backed by any new funding and schools funding has not been protected from cuts, in direct contradiction to what David Laws claimed in the coalition talks with Labour a few days after the election.

2.26pm: I'm just off to a briefing. I'll post when I'm back.

3.10pm: This is fun. YouGov have been polling Lib Dem members and they've found that Lib Dem members have a higher opinion of David Cameron than Simon Hughes!

3.20pm: The Lib Dems are debating green taxes at the moment. I haven't been paying attention, but my colleague James Randerson is on the case. He's sent me this.

Deputy head of environment and editor of environmentguardian.co.uk James Randerson Illustration: Christian Sinibaldi

Conference is talking about green taxation and there is palpable excitement that their man (Chris Huhne) is in the hot seat at the Department of Energy and Climate Change. This motion is all about party members making sure that the coalition comes good on the Lib Dems' green policies (their manifesto went further than the three main parties before the election).

Moving the motion, Paul Chambers said that David Cameron's ambition to lead the "greenest government ever" was arguably "not much of a challenge". But he said that Lib Dem members would be looking for a "step-change" in green policy. The motion is a bundle of green measures - including a floor price for carbon and taxing planes rather

than air passengers - that have mostly long been Lib Dem policy.

But the party's green spokesperson in the European parliament, Chris Davies, pointed out the dangers of trying to be green while at the same time cutting spending.

"We have a common enemy, not the Labour party, not the media, something much much worse - it's called the Treasury."

He said that the chancellor's department, although full of brilliant people, "too often seem to see the price of everything but the value of nothing". The danger was that "ministers' strong green pledges would be turned into weak aspirations".

To laughter in the conference hall he cautioned that Yes Minister was not a comedy programme but a training film for new ministers and urged the conference to "send a message to the treasury - hands off our environmental commitments". It remains to be seen whether the Treasury is listening.

3.33pm: Jeremy Browne, a Lib Dem Foreign Office minister, told a fringe meeting at lunchtime that the coalition would survive if the public voted against the alternative vote in referendum.

I don't think the outcome of the referendum is [a deal-breaker]. You know, we have an opportunity to make the case for AV, I think the case is very compelling. If people don't vote for it, we get on with life, it's not the only issue in the world.

3.34pm: Nick Clegg's wife, Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, was turned away from the conference centre because she forgot her pass, the BBC reports.

4.12pm: Nick Clegg is due to stand up in about five minutes. As soon as he gets to his feet, I'll be able to post the highlights from the speech.

In the conference hall Lady Scott, the outgoing party president, has just finished handing out party awards.

4.16pm: Nick Clegg has just started speaking, but I can post the highlights now because we've already been given the text. There's not much new in policy terms in. The only announcement relates to local government finance, and even Clegg himself admits that it's a bit boring. But the political messages are strong, and some of the language is the best I've heard from Clegg. Here are the main points.

• Clegg is telling his party – and his country – to be patient because Britain will be a better place in 2015. "Stick with us and together we will change Britain for good," he said.

I believe at times of great difficulty, great things can still be done. At times of great difficulty, great things must be done.



• He is annoucing that councils will be given more power to borrow money. The government will let them borrow money, using the extra revenue that they are going to receive because the government is going to allow them to keep some extra business rates as security. Aides have not been able to tell us how much money this will actually generate.

• He defends the government's academy programme. Responding to this morning's vote against the academy programme, he says:

I want to be really clear about what the government is proposing. It's not Labour's academies programme: a few schools singled out for preferential treatment - a cuckoo in the nest that eats up attention and resources. We're opening up the option of Academy freedom to all schools … My vision is that every school, in time, will be equal, every school equally free.



• He insists that the government will not impose cuts in the way that Margaret Thatcher did. "It will not be like the 80s," he says. "We will make these cuts as fairly as possible."He also says that, even after all the cuts have been implemented, government spending will still be 41% of national income – the level it was in 2006.

The spending review is about balance and responsibility not slash and burn.

• He insists that he is strongly committed to devolving power. "It is not smaller government I believe in. It's a different kind of government: a liberating government," he says. Councils may have less money. But they will be given "more freedom than ever before."

• He strongly defends coaltion government. "Two parties acting together can be braver, fairer and bolder than one party acting along," he says.

• And he criticises Labour for having nothing to say about tackling the deficit. "We had 100,000 ideas from members of the public about how to cut waste and do things more effectively. And not a single idea from the Labour Party.," he says.

Finally, it's a bit light on jokes. Very light, in fact. But there is one that works.

Has anyone else lost track of the books Labour people keep publishing? Never in the field of political memoirs, has so much been written by so few about so little. They went from nationalisation to serialisation. From The Third Way to a third off at the book shop.

4.23pm: Clegg said that some things are the same as before the election, and some are different.

I still think the war in Iraq was illegal. The difference is lawyers now get anxious when I mention it.

That was intended as a joke, although I think it's the first time he has said that government lawyers got twitchy when he made his statement about the war being illegal at the dispatch box. Now - amazingly - the government does not actually have a position on whether or not the war was legal.

4.25pm: The Treasury has just issued a press notice about the new borrowing powers for councils that Clegg is announcing. It's called tax increment financing. 'This may not make the pulses race,' as Clegg says in his speech. Too right.

4.31pm: Clegg has just finished a passage about debt. "Would you ask your children to pay your credit card bill?" he asked. "Yes," replied a colleague in the press room.

4.39pm: Clegg has repeated the message that he and Danny Alexander gave at the weekend about cracking down on tax evasion.

We all agree it's wrong when people help themselves to benefits they shouldn't get. But when the richest people in the country dodge their tax bills that is just as bad. Both come down to stealing money from your neighbours.



4.46pm: Clegg has just made the announcement about tax increment financing. (See 4.25pm.) It got a rather good reception. Many people who come to party conferences are councillors and, although the public at large isn't very interested in local government finance, audiences like this are.

4.47pm: Clegg has just delivered his joke about the Labour memoirs. "From nationalisation to serialisation" got a laugh. But his line about "so much written by so few about so little" is a classic example of someone including a line because it sounds good, even though it's not true. The Mandelson and Blair books actually cover rather a lot.

4.51pm: The full text of Clegg's speech is now on the Lib Dem website.

5.03pm: Clegg is getting towards the end. He has just taken a swipe at the broadcast the Tories produced before the election saying a hung parliament would be a disaster.

Never again will anyone be able to frighten the voters by claiming that coalition government doesn't work.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrat Party, begins his speech at his party's conference in Liverpool Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters

5.04pm: The speech is over. I'm still trying to work out whether Clegg delivered a speech in which the only announcement was something arcane called tax increment financing because he hasn't got a clue about what interests the media (can you imagine Andy Coulson ever allowing that to be the main story in a David Cameron speech) or whether it was because the Lib Dems wanted to make a point about how serious, responsible and gimmick-resistant they really are.

Clegg had a standing ovation lasting three minutes.

5.06pm: The first reaction to Nick Clegg's speech comes from the RMT's Bob Crow. It's a bit predictable - sorry, very predictable - but here it is anyway.

The Liberals went into the election promising one thing and then sold out their principles the minute the Tories offered them a sniff of power. The Liberals have become nothing less than the outriders for the most reactionary and right wing government in a generation and they can expect one almighty kicking from the voters when the time comes.

5.08pm: Earlier the conference passed a motion calling for 10% of government revenue to come from green taxes by 2015. Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, backed the motion.

5.20pm: Labour's Liam Byrne has put out a statement about the new borrowing powers announced for councils:



Labour pioneered new borrowing freedoms for councils in our March budget. But all the freedom in the world, I'm afraid, won't make up for Tory budget cuts that are so fast and so deep that communities across our country will be scarred with higher unemployment. Nor do they excuse the Lib Dems cheering on an economic plan that punishes the poorest in our society.

5.47pm: Here's an afternoon reading list.

• Will Straw at Left Foot Forward says that in his speech Nick Clegg used an analogy pioneered by Margaret Thatcher when he explained why the deficit had to be cut. Straw says Clegg and Thatcher were both wrong.

• Iain Martin at his Wall Street Journal blog says Nick Clegg received a surprisingly downbeat reaction.



In any other party [being in government] would have earned Clegg a hero's reception from his own conference. But this isn't any other party. It's the Liberal Democrats.

So they seemed a bit bemused during his speech, applauding politely and only really getting into it when he threw them some left-wing read meat (such as his "daring" attack on bankers).



• The Daily Telegraph lists numbers 50 to 26 in their list of most influential Lib Dems.

• Mark Pack at Lib Dem Voice gives his assessment of the conference so far.



So overall? Conference pretty calm, with a general mood of desire to see coalition succeed but thinking that more Liberal Democrat policies need to be delivered for that to be the case.



• Alex Barker at the Financial Times's Westminster blog lists his top 10 Liberal conference moments. My favourite is from 1958:

Sir Alan Comyns Carr was a conference chairman with a disconcerting habit of keeping his notes between his mouth and his microphone. But his address in 1958, during an international security crisis over two obscure islands in the Taiwan Straits, is fondly remembered to this day. 'Fellow Liberals,' he declared. 'The eyes of the world are on us – I do not want to say anything which might exacerbate the situation in Quemoy and Matsu.'

5.56pm: Lady Eaton, head of the Local Government Association, has welcomed the announcement about council borrowing.

It is good news the government has listened to the calls from local government for the power to turn local tax revenue into investment that will keep our roads free from potholes, fund better public transport and make sure schools and community centres do not crumble.

6.21pm: There is quite a lot of reaction to the speech on the wires now from Lib Dem MPs, but it's all predictably laudatory – eg, "inspirational", says Solihull MP Lorely Burt – and so I'll spare you from reading any more. I'm about to finish, but, before I go, here's an afternoon summary.

• Nick Clegg told his party – and his country – to trust the coalition. In his conference speech, the deputy prime minister said that the years ahead would "not be easy", but the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives would "change Britain for good". It was an earnest, defensive speech, thin on jokes and containing just one announcement, a technical one relating to local government finance. But the tone may be appropriate to the times and, with the rhetoric toned down, Clegg was able to ensure that his audience focused on his argument, which was about the perils of debt, the virtues of coaltion and the attractions of decentralisation. He received a reception that was warm but certainly not ecstatic. (See 4.16pm)

• Lib Dem ministers have shrugged off their defeat in a motion on academies and free schools this morning. Sarah Teather, an education minister, said that the government would "take into account the things that are said" but that the vote would not change coaliton policy. Clegg said that in time he wanted every school to be"equally free".

• The Lib Dems passed a motion saying that 10% of the government's revenue should be coming from green taxes by 2015. The full text of the motion is here.

That's it for today. Thanks for the comments.