Conference Season in the UK

Well conference season is upon us and that means the main political groupings in the UK are setting out their stalls and positioning themselves for the next few years.

Most recently Labour elected a new leader, Ed Milliband whose election came as a surprise to most outsiders due to the fact that his older and higher profile brother, David, was assumed to be a shoe-in. The younger Milliband (that's the one on the left) won the race for the leadership because the trades unions favoured him. Yes, despite the fact that most trade union members don’t even vote Labour anymore, the union movement finances Labour and wields a great deal of influence event today.

Interestingly, over 50% of labour party members regarded David Milliband as more likely to be able to lead the Labour party effectively. This reminds me again of the numbers of rank and file Liberals who are uneasy with their own leadership.

This disconnect between the leadership and party members – it’s all quite telling isn’t it? Regarding the Liberal democrats, we can see that the thirst for power has resulted in polls showing large numbers of voters deserting that party. When I say large, I mean about 4 million voters who went with the Lib Dems in April, would not today. In terms of percentage of the vote this puts them down to 12% from a high of almost 35% earlier in the year.

Next up: the Conservatives and the Scottish Nationalists hold their conferences in October.

A Nordic Meeting of Minds

COBCOE represents 34 British Chambers of Commerce and 10,000 businesses working in 31 countries and the BECC have been enthusiastic members at executive level for several years now.

The COBCOE (Council of British Chambers of Commerce in Europe) Nordic-Baltic Group meeting took place in Tallinn on 23-24 August 2010 with representatives from British Chambers of Commerce in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland.

I managed to attend a day of this conference myself and was taken by the fact that whilst there are 'British' chambers of commerce in many countries, there are just as many different ways of doing things.

The meeting focused on improving trade and investment flows between the COBCOE Nordic-Baltic area and the UK and future cooperation plans were discussed – including a common website, Nordic Regional Group sponsors, joint-marketing and joint events in UK. The main aim of the cooperation is of course even better network and business opportunities to our member-companies. We also discussed potential opportunities for organizations like the BECC which were made possible by a change in UK government.

“We know that the private sector, working through chambers of commerce will be a vital component in the recovery of economies in Europe and there are some tremendous business opportunities ahead of us. In this internet age and global market, personal contacts are more important than ever and COBCOE delivers to its constituent members a unique business network across Europe and to other major trading nations in the world” said Howard Rosen, the President of the COBCOE.

The Group were also dinner guests of the UK Ambassador to Estonia, HE Peter Carter and the cooperation plans between British chambers and UK Trade & Investment were also discussed during the dinner.

The Group will meet again at the COBCOE Annual Conference in London in April 2011 and the next annual meeting of the nordic group will take place next August in Reykjavik, Iceland.