Assembly election 'a huge challenge' for Lib Dems

The Lib Dems are holding their UK autumn conference in Bournemouth.

Good afternoon from sunny Bournemouth, where the Lib Dems are in conference,

Four months after their disastrous general election performance, the party is trying to lick its wounds here and persuade voters it remains relevant.

The party's only Welsh MP, Mark Williams, says its main aim this week is to get noticed - to get its message across.

He told me on the Sunday Politics that the party faces "a huge challenge" in next May's elections to the National Assembly but he thought the party could still end up with a "sizeable team" of AMs by campaigning "on the ground in key areas".

The Ceredigion MP, who is also deputy leader of the Welsh Lib Dems, said the party shouldn't be "distracted" before the elections by "unhelpful "speculation about a possible coalition with other parties.

"We will see what the electorate gives us after the election but we are not going to get into this coalition talk at any stage now."

'Campaigns'

The Welsh Lib Dems are defending five seats next year. They lost two of their three Westminster seats last May.

He said that after the general election result this year, the Lib Dems needed to "re-establish and re-define the Liberal narrative" and be clear what they stood for.

Mr Williams said the Lib Dems would be highlighting their campaigns for social justice, internationalism, the green agenda and civil liberties.

"As the Tory party moves to the right and the Labour party moves to the left, there has never been a greater need for a Liberal party to campaign on people's behalf."

Mr Williams was the only one of the Liberal Democrat MPs not to be offered a job in Tim Farron's team.

But he told me he "got the job I wanted" after later being given a UK-wide role campaigning on rural issues rather than a departmental brief.