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During the Liberal Democrat party conference, political commentators take stock of the party's situation.

The that party conferences display naval gazing at a time of "escalating cataclysms":

"The EU is about to implode, the UK economy is going under, urban youth in British cities have just burned down their neighbourhoods and the Arab world is in ferment.
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"And so what are the big talking points of the day in Britain? Gay marriage, bashing the rich and (a few days ago) cutting the length of the school holidays."

Concentrating on how the coalition is working out for Lib Dem party members, that they prefer to be in opposition:

"There is a still a strong feeling that going into coalition was the right thing to do for party and country. Lib-Dems who think otherwise, I'm told, 'should seriously question [their] logic 'because there was no alternative. However much that is true, Lib-Dems still miss opposition. One source says, 'opposition is lovely' and the conference hall erupted into chest-beating rapture for the party's president, Tim Farron, who declared that Clegg was 'leading the opposition' as well as being David Cameron's deputy."

Liberal Democrat party member that the party members are miserable because they feel left out of decision making:

"We're the political party where the membership really does set the agenda. Where the same people who trudge up and down wet streets on grey Sunday mornings stuffing leaflets through letterboxes are the ones who get to tell the front bench what the party policy actually will be ( as opposed to should be). And where political expediency has been anathema to the good folk who pay their subs every year in exchange for the right to say 'this is where I stand'.
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"And we now find ourselves pursuing an agenda set in four hectic days of negotiation last May by eight men in a Whitehall conference room, half of whom were the enemy."

Some commentators concentrate on where the Liberal Democrats will position themselves for voters. that the Lib Dems will be able to regain the centre ground of politics, eventually following the success of Tony Blair as a centrist:

"Miliband has also made space for the Lib Dems on public-service reform. Labour's opposition to free schools and its ambivalence about academies (introduced by Blair) mark a big step back from the centre ground. The Lib Dems aren't in hock to the public-sector unions or any other vested interests and Clegg's instinct is to shake up public services when they're not delivering...
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"Cameron too has bolstered the Lib Dems' claim to the middle ground. He has allowed them to take credit for almost every civilising amendment to Tory policy, whether it is watering down the badly-conceived NHS reforms, introducing the pupil premium or raising the income tax threshold."

But the that the strain of economic problems will lead to "angry polarising" of politics:

"There is only one, faint sign that Lib Dems realise the danger of being crushed between two sharper ideological reactions to bad times - and that's their insistence on defending the totemic 50p income tax rate or replacing it with something equally tough on the rich. The 50p tax may not raise much extra money, but it's of huge political importance as a signal that the coalition does not intend to reward the rich and make the majority take the strain.
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"But totems won't be enough. Lib Dems complain people aren't paying enough attention to those taken out of tax at the bottom, or giving them enough credit for 'fairness'. That's because the really big decisions, on the deficit and letting unemployment rise, simply swamp the smaller ones."