TODAY IN A SENTENCE CONFERENCE CATCH-UP NICK ASSINDER'S DIARY

TOMORROW'S HIGHLIGHTS QUOTES OF THE DAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

Election celebrations abound in the conference hall but the left/right battle for the soul of the party and mutterings about Charles Kennedy's leadership are the dominant topics off stage.

Party chairman Simon Hughes pledges to "deliver Liberal Democracy" across Britain "soon" and "in our time".

Sir Menzies Campbell calls for an end to the US and UK "occupation" of Iraq and an "ethical" foreign policy.

Delegates vote down a proposal by the leadership to cap the amount Britain pays to the EU.

Health spokesman Steve Webb warns NHS dentistry services are "on the brink of disaster" with many threatening to quit because of proposed new contracts.

If your idea of fun is watching grown men tearing out their hair or dissolving into floods of desperate tears then get yourselves down to the press room at the Lib Dem conference. Thanks to a pretty major cock up on the communications front, nothing works - no computer links, no internet access and, most important of all, no way for most of the hacks to file the stories currently clogging up their notebooks. Still, there is an internet caf� in the Winter Gardens which suddenly discovered it had a potential rush of customers on its hands. Except, needless to say, it too is relying on the same system. So it doesn't work. As one delegate declared: "The old joke was that the Lib Dems could hold their conference in a phone box. Not any longer - the phone doesn't work."

Blackpool-born Lib Dem peer Lord Tom McNally opened the conference in a rather garish, tangerine football shirt. He revealed it was an exact replica of the strip worn by Blackpool FC when it last won the FA cup. In 1953. "It seems like yesterday," he quipped. That's what happens when you are in the Lords.

Party chief Lord Tim Razzall was getting decidedly irritated at the constant questions over Charles Kennedy's leadership during his morning press briefing. He was particularly dismissive of one poll suggesting the party would do much better with a better leader. "I am surprised 100% of those asked didn't agree with that," he said. Europe spokesman Nick Clegg chipped in, helpfully. Asking if there should be a new leader who would make a better prime minister was "like asking whether you want �1m or �4m," he said to a chorus of: "so what's Charles worth then?". He's priceless, of course.

Well, how much is Charles Kennedy worth then (see item above). The party appears to have put a price of �400 on his head. That is how much tickets cost to have lunch and a cream tea with Mr Kennedy. OK, the Liberal Democrat Business forum also throws in "day long seminars with senior MPs, peers and external business leaders".

1000 Speech by Graham Watson MEP

1120 Speech by Vincent Cable, Treasury spokesman

1225 Speech by Sarah Teather, local government spokesman

"The threat was manufactured not in the sands of Iraq, but in the corridors of Whitehall," Sir Menzies Campbell, on the government's case for war in Iraq.

"Lynton Crosby does not deserve to have returned to Australia any more happy than Ricky Ponting," Simon Hughes compares the performance of the Tories' Australian election strategist with that of its Ashes-losing cricket captain.