Exciting days - for Liberal Democrats as well, says Simon Hughes

Written by Simon Hughes MP, Liberal Democrat Federal Party President on Sun 17th Jun 2007

The new Prime Minister has taken over. New ministers are taking their places. A new chapter in British political history has this week begun.

The political interest in Labour's deputy leadership election and the shape of the new Gordon Brown team has seen the political agenda more very quickly in recent days and will see much more movement and excitement between now and the end of the political term in a month's time. Which means that last week's sudden explosion into the press of Gordon Brown's offer to Ming and to others, to entice one or more Liberal Democrats into the new government, has already almost entirely been overtaken by other events.

I have not heard a single member of the party disagree with the view Ming took. He was right to go to see Gordon Brown and right to consider all issues that Gordon put to him. Ming was then absolutely right to say that no Liberal Democrat could or should join this government when our principled party had opposed so much of what New Labour had done.

Among all the national hurly-burly, the last fortnight has almost hidden some other significant political events for our party. Following the sad death of Piara Khabra, the good people of Ealing Southall will have to choose a new MP. As the runner-up party last time, this must be the main focus of all our political efforts from now until this election.

Then last weekend there was a really positive and significant councillors' conference in Birmingham, the first to be jointly organised between ALDC and LGA. I hope this is an encouragement for much more established pattern in the future, where the Federal Party's annual weekend conference, now held in early March, could be moved back to February and be linked to an annual Liberal Democrat councillors' conference as the launch for the annual cycle of council elections.

Just before going to Birmingham there was a very special event in Leeds. In Leeds North west, the new Liberal Democrat office was opened - to serve the local party, the wider Leeds party and Greg Mulholland as our new and excellent MP.

The great joy of Friday's events was that the new building has been named Wainwright House in honour of the late, great Richard Wainwright MP - and Joyce wainwright, his wonderful wife, was there to open it with me - together with Martin and Hilary.

talking to MPs, many of my colleagues, in the class of 1997, have just been celebrating their tenth anniversaries. I want to pay tribute to what a fantastic group of colleagues they have been.

In living memory we have never has so many colleagues elected at the same time. But it isn't just quantity that came our way, it is quality too. To Norman Baker, Tom Brake, Colin Breed, Paul Burstow, Vince Cable, Ed Davey, Andrew George, Mike Hancock, Evan Harris, David Heath, Paul Keetch, Michael Moore, Mark Oten, Lembit Opik, Bob Russell, Adrian Sanders, bob Smith, Andrew Stunell, Steve Webb and Phil Willis, I say, from the whole party, thank you, thank you , thank you. You have helped grow and expand our party.

Thanks to this terrific 20, and many others, we can be confident that the best is yet to come.