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?

Separating out student immigration from net migration figures would be entirely compatible with what the two parties of government signed up to in the Coalition Agreement, Liberal Democrat deputy leader Simon Hughes told a British Future and CentreForum fringe meeting at his party’s conference in Brighton.

British Future and Centre Forum went to the annual Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton to discuss Is It Possible To Be Liberal and Popular on Immigration?

Young Britons struggling to find work in austerity Britain find themselves at the sharp end of immigrant competition, so you might expect them to be tougher on this issue than their parents, says one of the author’s of the new BSA report Rob Ford.