A drunk in a gimp suit marches down the Brighton seafront, past a gaggle of blacked-up Mr T impersonators. "Lib Dem," he shouts, muffled by his mask. "Lib Dem! Lib DEM!"
The gimp will struggle to gain entry dressed like that – he's got no lanyard – but he has at least come to the right place. Down the road stands the Brighton Centre. Inside, the great Liberal diaspora – the tribe of Mill, Gladstone and Grimond – has cocooned itself behind a coating of airport scanners and G4S staff to debate such talking points as Policy Paper 104 (Decent Homes For All); the renewable energy directive; and fairness.
Oh, and Nick Clegg. The man who has made the Liberal Democrats both a party of government, and national pariahs. The bloke who broke the promise not to raise tuition fees. The albatross around every Lib Dem's neck.
Or is he? Twice a year since the last election, journalists have descended on the Lib Dem conference hoping to cover a civil war. This week, hopes were higher still. Trevor Smith, a Lib Dem peer, had damned Clegg as a "cork bobbing in the waves". Lord Matthew Oakeshott – a close ally of Vince Cable – whacks Clegg for fun. New polls suggest half of party members are dissatisfied with Clegg. Cable looms in the wings. The assassin in the fedora.
But a bloodbath, much to the media's disappointment, this was not. Up and down the shore, someone has posted a rash of yellow posters that rage against the Lib Dems' alliance with the Tories. "Ruin The Lib Dems' Weekend," they say. "COMBAT WORKFARE." Here and there, inside the conference, there are flashes of a similar fury. But they're hard to find at first.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry – I'm so, so sorry." In the centre of the foyer, three teenage girls are singing – actually singing – the musical sendup of Nick Clegg's apology. One of them wears a badge that says "totally coalitious". All three know the song off by heart. "That song," notes 16-year-old Alexandra White, down from Galloway for the week, "is so cool." Meanwhile, Scottish secretary Michael Moore is her "BFF" – and 13-year-old Claire Boad is after party president Tim Farron. "He owes us a hug."
They are the most frighteningly on-message teenagers ever – but their optimism is not unique. In the shop selling Lib Dem tat, a set of crude Sorry-themed badges is already on sale, only two days after the apology was made. They're emblazoned with Clegg's mug, which sits beneath a quotation, written in Comic Sans: "We made a pledge, we didn't stick to it – and for that I am sorry." Within a day, the badges have sold out.
The Lib Dems, though, have not – at least according to many of their members. Despite the dismantling of the NHS, the slashing of benefits and the hike in tuition fees, much of the rank-and-file – to my utter surprise – are proud of their small achievements in office. "What would it have been like if we'd had an entirely Conservative government?" asks councillor Kath Pinnock, who chairs the association of Liberal Democrat councillors (ALDC). "We wouldn't have raised the tax threshold. We wouldn't have the pupil premium."
Nick Clegg takes a Q&A session. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell At one packed-out fringe event, a panel of non-Lib Dem commentators argue that the party has done little to rein in the Tories. "The NHS is being stripped bare. It's absolutely absurd to say: 'We saved the NHS,'" argues Stuart Weir, a former New Statesman editor. "Rubbish!" counters my neighbour. "Pathetic," says another.
So forget the albatross, at least for a few paragraphs. The heaviest thing around a conference-goer's neck is a tangle of lanyards. It's the motif of the conference – along with stale sarnies, leaden speeches, men drowning in ill-sized suits and acronyms.
"They speak a different language!" cries Pauline Pearce, better known as the Hackney Heroine, the woman who took on the rioters last year. Somehow, she ended up running for council as a Lib Dem. And here she is: a bemused first-time spectator at a Lib Dem conference. "The fourth referendum of the third amendment of the 14th manifesto," she laughs. "What does it all mean?"
She's right, of course. The place is wonk heaven. JEET, for instance, is the conference's inscrutable buzzword – or if you want to be strictly accurate, EEJT, since that is the order in which each letter is addressed – but what each letter stands for I can't remember.
David Laws may know. "I know some of you think of me as a number-crunching, desiccated, calculating machine," he tells his party. "There is, sad to say, some truth in that." And BBC presenter Justin Webb would presumably agree. "You can't imagine what it's like to be stuck in Miami," he tweets at the weekend, "when you know the Liberal Democrat conference has begun back home." To which his BBC colleague Nick Robinson replies: "[We've got] Norman Baker. Take that Miami!"
Norman Baker? He's a hardworking Lib Dem transport minister who is hitting Brighton hard, speaking at 29 fringe meetings over five days. During a breather, he sits down next to me. A member approaches. Could he make a 30th? Oh, all right then. Tomorrow at 12?
Here and there, grand ideas do emerge from behind the clutter of banality. In a tiny, sweaty room at the back of a seaside hotel, Richard Reeves – Clegg's outgoing strategist – outlines what he says is a new political philosophy: "Cleggism". He suggests that in order to compete at the next election, the party needs to redefine itself in the image of its leader – in other words: as a party that is Cleggist; that seeks power, not protest; that is proudly Liberal, not social democratic. And which, most importantly, is led by Nick Clegg.
Ironically, Clegg himself spends his time saying rather more prosaic things. "I'm sorry," is one. The world's worst slogan – "Fairer Tax In Tough Times" – is another. What a way to spend his 12th wedding anniversary.
"Why are all these places lacking colour?" Pearce wonders. "You look around. For every two black people, there's 200 white men." It's expensive, too. "You can't come if you're on benefits." Unless, like Pearce, you're sponsored by a generous member.
So, yes, it's a world removed from reality – a parallel universe. Or rather it's several parallel universes, all in one place. The hall's where things happen. The press room's where they decide what actually happened. Then there's the fringe, where they discuss what should be happening. And finally the bars, where things happen that shouldn't. You can spend all day in the hall and not have a clue how it has played in the press gallery. And perhaps the reverse is also true. Certainly, the press room is a bizarre place – an airless room without windows located far from the crowds, cluttered mainly with wires, empty coffee cups and dark-suited men watching all the action on TV.
Speaking of which, where is this action? Sure, there are rumblings against Clegg – and not everyone gives the Treasury's Danny Alexander a standing ovation. Numbers are down, too – only 5,500 delegates, compared with 6,500 in 2011 (although half of the absentees are journalists). And true, Linda Jack – chair of Liberal Left, the party's most leftwing faction – tables a motion criticising coalition economics.
But there's no serious plot. I find it bizarre, considering the backstabbing Charles Kennedy had to endure. I worked briefly as Kennedy's postboy, and I was in his office when he was deposed. This party can do vicious – it's partly what made me leave – but for the moment it's pretty disciplined. "What we seem to have so far is a leadership beauty contest rather than an actual coup," tweets a disappointed Daily Mail journalist, Tim Shipman. "Very dull."
Clegg holds a Q&A for all members on Sunday, but he gets an astonishingly easy ride. Barring two questions about his recent apology, the members are mainly concerned with the minutiae of specific policies. Tidal turbines versus wind turbines. The data communications bill. "Phew!" laughs Clegg.
Delegates at the opening session of the conference. Photograph: Luke Macgregor They always seem to be laughing, the Lib Dems. It's how they deal with the leadership issue. Cable mocks Miliband, who recently texted him about a potential alliance. Farron teases Oakeshott. Clegg ribs himself. "I'm sorry," he says, after one quip falls flat. "I told a joke I couldn't deliver." Everyone laughs. Ho ho ho. It's like they're almost proud of the attention, even if it comes at a cost. "We're at 8% in the polls, and we've got 8% of MPs," notes one wag at a fringe event on Monday. "PR at last."
Again, everyone laughs – but it's a reminder of a more sobering issue. Don't these folk face political annihilation? "It's half-time," says a phlegmatic David Schmitz, whose Haringey council seat has a majority of just 13. "For the moment, collective responsibility obscures our achievements and differences. But as we get nearer to the election, our work will become more apparent. Every time the Tory right froth at the mouth, we know we're doing something right."
They're egged on by the absurd triumphalism of the party leadership. "You are the most important people I know," Tim Farron deadpans. "Never have Liberal Democrat voices and values been so important." Sillier still, Clegg reels off a list of his achievements in office. Some – like ending child detention – are worth crowing about. But "the most ambitious home-insulation programme the UK has ever seen"? Not so catchy.
In search of some dissent, I track down Tom Wood, who chairs Liberal Youth – the party's autonomous student wing. Tuition fees, I say: didn't that hurt? Sure, says Wood. He felt "hurt and rejected" at the time, and he still opposes the bill. But even Wood is keeping the faith. "The Nick Clegg who made that apology is the Nick Clegg of the debates of 2010," says Wood, completely seriously. "I want him to lead us up to the next election."
So what's going on: are they in denial? Pragmatic? Or just on-message?
It's a bit of all three, says an MP I meet on the seafront. Lib Dems are still excited to be in power. For a long time, they've seen themselves as lovable amateurs – but now they're in government, they want to prove their professionalism. And they genuinely think the electorate will eventually admire them for it. What's more, they've also been here before. The Lib Dems have always found themselves far behind in the mid-term polls, and yet – thanks to their exceptional campaign machine – they have usually ended up defending their seats. Where they are active, they are liked. Locals are even hopeful, I'm told, of holding Nick Clegg's seat in Sheffield. "We can make our own weather," argues the MP.
In literal terms, they haven't done a very good job of that. The Saturday sun soon gives way to high winds – the kind that shunts you backwards if you cross its path. Dozens of Lib Dems tossed down a street by an invisible hand – it's an amusing sight, and it sums up their predicament. They're browbeaten, swimming against the current – but up for the challenge.
As the week goes on, dissenters emerge. In the trade fair upstairs, there's Gemma Roulston, membership secretary of the Liberal Democrat Disability Association. Her two children have disabilities, and she is terrified about what will happen to them under the coalition's benefit reform. "If things get worse and my family lost our benefits," says Roulston, "then this party and I will split. There doesn't seem to be any real sense of how the cuts are going to effect people like me who are on benefits, who want to be a valued member of society but are being kicked wherever we turn."
Things heat up further on the last night, at an event hosted by Liberal Left. "Where next for the Liberal Democrats?" the panellists asked. And for many the answer was clear: away from Clegg. "There is a feeling that this is no longer our party," says Linda Jack. A decade ago, she argued, social liberals like her were at the centre of the Liberal Democrats. But because so many leftwingers have since left, those who remain are now seen as extremists. If Clegg isn't gone by the next election, says Lembit Opik, "we'll be throttled to death".
And yes, that's the Lembit Opik, MP-turned-comedian-turned-wrestler, now back in the political fray because, as he says: politics is like malaria. You can't kick it. But you can kick Clegg, or at least try to: Opik brandishes a petition that calls for Clegg to remain as deputy prime minister, but step down as leader. Will it work? Hard to say. There are only 20 dissidents in the room – not a huge turnout – and Opik is himself out in the cold: ridiculed for losing one of the party's safest seats.
Besides, it's now 10pm and a better bellwether of the party's mood can be found at one of the nearby hotels. This is the Glee Club – the traditional close-of-conference singalong. Activists from all bits of the party gather to sing well-known songs – each lyric given a unique liberal twist, and each tune played by MP John Hemming. "On the second day of coalition," goes one entry in the songbook, "the Tories gave to me/Absolutely zilch/And a referendum on AV."
I'm told that Clegg's apology was added to the setlist this year. That sums it up, really. Their leader may be leading them to doom, but – chin up – they can still sing songs about him. With few left to sound the alarm, those who remain are naively Panglossian: all is for the best, in the best of all possible worlds. Elsewhere in their songbook, you can find the words for We Shall Overcome. And some of them genuinely believe it.
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