The Conference shall normally meet twice a year, for a week in the early autumn and a weekend in the early spring.

This is a problem for those who want either to axe completely or scale back to a single day the party's Spring conference. Presented as being a cost-saving proposal, the idea has bombed so far within the party, getting a near-unanimous thumbs down at a consultation session held at the last party conference.

Also very hostile to the plans are both the party's Federal Conference Committee (responsible for organising the conferences) and the Federal Policy Committee (responsible for much of their policy content). More suspicious party activists also fear that the proposals are motivated by a desire to reduce the number of opportunities for the party to hold its leadership to account.

Given this widespread resistance, it is hard to see how a constitutional amendment could get the necessary two-thirds majority at a party conference in order to remove the requirement for "a weekend" conference to be held each year. Hence the attempts to argue that a short event over just one day still meets the requirement.

If that is the case, it just takes a couple of party committee votes to implement the plan for Spring conference and if that were done, it would then be much easier to defend the new status quo (especially with arguments such as "but we only have booked the future venues for one day") than it would be to get that two-thirds majority.

The exchanges of legal arguments means the issue is now up with Federal Appeals Panel to rule on.