The Dragons’ Den format fringe on immigration and integration backed a practical as well as theoretical citizenship test, but rejected letting the market decide or introducing a faith-preference for persecuted Christians in the asylum process.

Restricting EU free movement with central and East European countries won support from Conservative Parliamentarians and from liberal commentators at the Demos and British Future fringe meeting in Birmingham.

The loaded imperialistic connotations of the ‘Great’ in Great Britain need to be shed if our country is to earn its prefix, agreed the panel at the Times Debate at Cheltenham Literature Festival yesterday.

The centenary of the Great War in 2014 could provide the next major national moment to bring people together – and to ensure that we know the shared history of modern Britain, British Future director Sunder Katwala will tell a fringe meeting at Conservative Party conference.

The troubled political terrain that is immigration policy is not going away, writes Max Wind-Cowie, head of the Progressive Conservatism Project at Demos.

A “coalition of the rational” could unite politicians across the major parties and secure public support for the types of immigration that most people think is in Britain’s interests, shadow immigration minister Chris Bryant told a Progress and British Future fringe event at the Labour party conference in Manchester.

Can you be liberal and popular on immigration?, asked the British Future immigration debate at the Lib Dem conference, which challenged the Liberal Democrats to combine principle with the challenge of securing public consent on this hotly contested issue.

“There is no excuse for weak controls on illegal immigration,” said David Ward MP at a fringe at Liberal Democrat conference, adding this was an issue on which he said his party could tend to be a bit “wishy-washy liberal”.

British Future and Progress joined forces at the annual Labour Party conference in Manchester to consider The Doorstep Challenge – How Can Labour Talk About Immigration?