Halfway through the Liberal Democrats' conference and the party's leadership is feeling well satisfied.

Kennedy's work on Iraq, including his statement to the party faithful, had generated plenty of media coverage which will resonate outside the Brighton conference centre.

As far as the leadership is concerned the public at large is the primary audience; speeches to delegates are preaching to the converted.

The recall has caused minimal disruption to the conference so Kennedy's gamble of backing demands for a Commons debate has paid off.

There were few changes to Monday night's fringe events; Brighton's close proximity to London meant many MPs were able to catch the morning train to London.

Reports of a "champagne Charlie" reception on Monday for the media were wide of the mark.

The bubbly didn't flow and Kennedy didn't show. Most of his MPs and the press pack had already left to investigate Downing Street's dossier which was being published the next day.

Though the votes on rural affairs were close, the party has now come to expect a minor showdown with the old-guard and sent out Dr Evan Davis, a favourite of the traditionalists, to placate them with a warning "not to tie our hands".

The leadership saw it as a chance to highlight the fact that the party has still yet to completely turn their conference into an exercise in stage management.

"We're not the Labour Party," said one of the organisers. "We can live with a bit of dissent in the ranks."

Tuesday saw the focus back on Westminster for the Iraq debate, but it made little difference to the delegates who carried on with their rounds of trade stands and fringe meetings.

The presence of shopping bags in the press room testified to several hacks' decision to use the interlude to gain some retail therapy in Brighton's boutiques.

The lull also meant a group of media students were able to quiz the party's director of communications.

There were blushes over the pornography debate but the party's key media operator, Lord Razzall, had by Tuesday morning come up with a post-modern defence. They'd have got away with a spat-free conference if it wasn't for those pesky kids in the youth and student section.

"Having asked them to play a bigger part in conference, you can't then tell them they can't have their debate because you don't like what they've come up with," he argued.

The debate itself failed to live up to its billing of smut and seaside humour - though it did produce one classic piece of Lib Dem-speak from one delegate.

Pornography, he argued, "commoditises aspects of human physicality".

Another argued that a party that had just voted to oppose the trafficking of human beings could not back liberalising the hardcore sex industry.

If the conference continues in the same distinctive but grown-up vein, party chiefs will regard the week as a big success.