SHORT of installing an organ and stuffed ravens, the annual conference of the Liberal Democrats, held in Birmingham this week, could scarcely have plumbed greater depths of Gothic gloom. Speech after speech talked of global crisis, painful choices and the horrors of coalition with the Conservatives. Yet simultaneously, members of Britain's third party-usually a fractious bunch-seemed in a splendid mood. There were both good and bad reasons for this paradoxical good cheer.
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