Whilst in Brighton, I found myself volunteering to help with the Suffolk County Co-ordinating Committee, a sinister group of Liberal Democrats working to elect more Liberal Democrats across Suffolk.
Now, in fairness, I've been there before, and it wasn't exactly the most exciting thing that I've ever done. But all good people should rally around the flag, and I've become a bit better at political strategy (you'd like to think so after all these years, wouldn't you?). Besides, you really can't just stand back and leave others to do the hard yards.
And so, I've spent part of an evening talked about a manifesto for next year's County Council elections. Unsurprisingly, you won't find any details here, because the drafting process is still at an early stage, and it's not going to be imposed upon our campaigners and activists without some consultation.
That said, there will be some obvious key elements. The Party nationally has outlined some key priorities, and you'd reasonably expect us to major on those in Suffolk, plus there are a number of challenges that face shire counties across the piece, especially that of finance.
It's going to be an interesting set of elections in Suffolk. Labour, who have generally been weak outside of the key towns, will now doubtless feel obliged to fight rural divisions, whilst the Greens will be ambitious to expand their influence beyond Mid Suffolk and the Waveney Valley and Reform will be something of a joker given their current lack of organisation and structure. The Conservatives have it all to lose, but in an atomised electorate, seats may well be won with relatively low percentages of the vote.
Our task, if you like, will be to find the space to make our presence felt amongst the hubbub of competing voices. How ready we are for the challenge is something that I hope to find out, having rather kept out of local Liberal Democrat politics in recent years.
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