Current location:	in bed, nursing my abdominal pain
Current mood:	melancholy
Entry tags:	#ldconf

Anyone with even the tiniest sliver of social grace knows that being a political activist of any stripe is faintly embarrassing. Politics is not cool and obsessing over turnouts and boundaries and psesphology marks one out as a bit of a weirdo.

How much more embarrassing, then, to be a Lib Dem activist. A social leper to even other politics geeks. Someone who hasn't got the entitlement complex and the brass to be a Tory, hasn't got the superiority complex and the moralising nature to join Labour. Someone who can tolerate being thought of as a sandal-wearing, muesli-eating, hippy do-gooder by most people.

But even among Lib Dem activists, there is a subset who are considered an embarrassment. Yes, people, I am talking about those of us who attend Glee Club. Glee Club basically involves getting drunk and laughing at bad jokes and singing painfully bad filks painfully badly. It's the political equivalent of your dad dancing at your 18th birthday party.

Glee Club is one of the things that make me proudest to be a Lib Dem. It's a giant two-fingered salute to all those po-faced arseholes who think that politicians ought to be staid and dull and grey. It says we don't care if you think we're an embarrassment; we've got a sense of humour and we don't care who knows it. It's a recognition of the fact that if you're going to make a difference to anything or anyone, first you have to overcome your embarrassment at standing out from the crowd. To paraphrase Kipling:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of raucous song,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Lib Dem, my son!

I hope all those of you who are on your way to Birmingham today will reflect on this, just a little. And if you attend Glee Club, raise a glass to me when they do the anthems and Ilkley Moor Baht 'At comes around. I'll be with you in spirit.

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My March sponsor is Mark Reckons.