Beyond Brighton Pier, several dinghies were enjoying a spectacular day, skimming briskly across the waves.
Inside the stark concrete conference centre hosting the Liberal Democrats, however, the atmosphere was considerably more turbulent. Julian Brazil, leader of Devon County Council, delivered a bleak assessment of party leader Sir Ed Davey — and it was far from flattering.
Sir Ed, Mr Brazil complained, had “allowed other parties to go steaming past us”. The Liberal Democrats, he argued, had become “peripheral”, lacking ambition, courage and messages that connected with voters.
Welcome to the conference.
Have the famously patient Liberal Democrats finally begun to suspect that their 60-year-old leader is out of his depth?
After a three-hour lunch break — three hours, despite the party’s apparent lack of drinking — Sir Ed took part in a question-and-answer session chaired by former Radio 4 journalist Carolyn Quinn. She raised Mr Brazil’s warning that the party was “sleep-walking into irrelevance” under his leadership.
Sir Ed, whose strategy is based on courting Labour in the hope of becoming deputy prime minister in a future coalition, was reluctant to attack the Government, writes Quentin Letts
There was also a brief danger of Sir Ed sleep-walking into inaudibility: his microphone was not working properly.
A technician eventually appeared on stage and handed him a handheld microphone that functioned.
Once he could be heard, Sir Ed said he had known Mr Brazil for years, subtly implying that the Devon councillor had long been a difficult character. He described him instead as “a good local councillor”.
The apparent message was clear: concentrate on Devon matters, or risk losing the support of local colleagues. It was a pointed exchange, delivered to a quiet hall that was not full.
Guest interviewers at party conferences are not usually expected to conduct hostile interrogations, but Ms Quinn gave Sir Ed little room for comfort. She raised Labour’s reported plan for a mansion tax on properties worth as little as £1.5 million and observed that his constituents in affluent Kingston upon Thames would be paying close attention.
Sir Ed, whose strategy centres on staying close to Labour in the hope of securing the deputy premiership in a future coalition, appeared unwilling to criticise the Government directly. Instead, he returned to the subject of Brexit, prompting the familiar, wavering cheers from sections of the Lib Dem audience.
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Ms Quinn then challenged him on what appeared to be a retreat into familiar territory, asking whether he supported retaining the pensions triple lock. He said he did, but a seeming majority of those in the hall appeared to disagree. The exchange was becoming increasingly uncomfortable.
With his forehead creased in discomfort, Sir Ed called it plainly a “controversial matter”. Some in the hall may have been left wondering whether Mr Brazil’s criticism had struck a chord: their leader seemed stodgy, yet not even aligned with all of his party’s instincts.
Other senior Liberal Democrats — if that description can be applied — appeared to have noticed the growing signs of dissent.
Daisy Cooper MP delivered the morning’s main speech with extraordinary energy. She waved her arms, crossed the stage, flashed her teeth, bounced up and down and shook her shoulders as if performing at a disco.
It felt less like a conventional political address than a Zumba class. Could Ms Cooper, a rapid-fire speaker with the gravitas of a television quiz show scoreboard operator, already be positioning herself for a possible leadership contest?
Josh Babarinde MP, the party’s president, was also drawing attention to himself, moving around the conference centre with a floppy-haired assistant following close behind.
Mr Babarinde, notably slim-waisted, adopted a more combative tone, declaring: “We’ve got to flip the table over and rise up!”
My, my, such bar-brawl talk from one so weedy. He looks as if he could barely flip a beer mat.
Ms Cooper, like Sir Ed, kept talking about dismantling Brexit. It’s their go-to response when they have nothing else to say.
She managed to get through her ‘keynote’ speech on the economy without mentioning welfare spending or defence budgets.
Instead, she bellowed about reducing regulation on businesses. That would be a splendid idea, no doubt, but the Lib Dems have seldom seen a regulation they did not like.