HOW are we doing for clean sheets and towels?

Is there enough bread left in the freezer? Does the lamp bulb in the Usain Bolt Suite need replaced? Such has been the number of visitors to Glasgow this year the city has begun to feel like one giant B&B in which we are no sooner saying cheerio to one set of lodgers than it is all change to welcome a new lot, in this case the Liberal Democrats, holding their party conference at the SECC from tomorrow.

Having been here last year as well, Nick Clegg's party must be starting to feel they belong to Glasgow. They either took a shine to the place, or canny party managers wangled a double booking discount. Either way, they are surely hoping the autumn 2014 visit is second time a charm. With a General Election only seven months away, the party needs all the luck it can get. But are there enough rabbits' feet, black cats, and four-leaved clovers in existence to ward off death by ballot box next May?

The question has become more pressing following a generally well received, by the London press anyway, Tory conference in Birmingham. How quickly the political times change. Can it be only weeks ago that Scotland was being told it could not build a future on earnings that might not materialise? But here were the Tories, playing not so much good cop, bad cop as Austerity George and Spendthrift Dave. Austerity George came on like a workhouse overseer on Monday, warning of ever tougher times to come. But by Wednesday, Spendthrift Dave could see the day when the deficit was not only eliminated but £7 billion in tax cuts would rain from the heavens. And all in time for the next but one General Election in 2020. Perhaps better than forecast oil revenues will pay for it all.

The LibDems promptly accused their Coalition partners of copying their homework. It is true the LibDems got there first on the £12,500 personal allowance promise, and they were instrumental in previously boosting the bar to £10,000. They have mooted similar plans to raise the threshold for paying National Insurance contributions. A clear case of the good guys being treated shabbily, then?

Many in the party might feel the same way when it comes to the independence referendum. If promises of more powers pan out (and at the moment you can take that to be an "if" the size of the Empire State Building balanced atop the Burj Khalifa in Dubai), the LibDems' vision of home rule, the kind of settlement they have been arguing for since Sir Menzies Campbell was a lad, could start to take shape.

So if the LibDems were ahead of the curve on tax and on devolution, and if we can take it as read that they are men and women of basically good intent (even if they are politicians), why has this once great party become the political equivalent of a plague of midges? What person of sound mind does not, when faced with the prospect of a LibDems' lecture on their plans for government, want to flail their arms and run screaming for the hills?

One does not have to look too far to see why. Poor choices, especially poor choice of bedfellows, have done for the LibDems. Just as Scottish Labour is paying the price for lying down with the Tories in the referendum campaign, so the LibDems will forever bear the stain of their decision to go into coalition with David Cameron in 2010.

After that, the sell-out on tuition fees in England was a betrayal waiting to happen. It was a U-turn so shameless it deserved the lingering contempt of voters. As soon as those voters had the chance to deliver a verdict they did, reducing the number of LibDem MSPs from 16 to five at the Scottish Parliament elections of 2011. Scottish voters had not even been directly affected by the LibDems' action, but they were just as outraged.

However competent Mr Clegg's speech turns out to be next Wednesday (and let us face it, the LibDems' leader can make Ed "Amnesia" Miliband sound like JFK), what is the betting that the members will leave Glasgow to go back to their constituencies to prepare for annihilation?

Yet if the history of this party shows anything it is that this is an outfit with a mighty survival instinct. Having evolved from the Liberal Party all the way to the SDP-Liberal Alliance, to the Social and Liberal Democrats, to the LibDems, the party can be regarded as a cockroach of the political landscape, able to withstand the kind of nuclear wars that would have obliterated a weaker species.

Perhaps a cockroach is not the kind of mascot the party would like to adopt. One fancies they would rather have a fluffy kitten, or a meerkat. But in some ways it is a compliment. If any political movement can look to its history for examples of revival after calamity, it is this one.

When appearing to be in mortal danger in the past, the party has drawn strength from its grassroots, and at the next General Election it will be no different. The LibDems have survived, and thrived, by fighting elections one doorstep at a time. Even so, Mr Clegg will have to prove himself something of a miracle worker if he is to convince voters and the media that this is not a dead party walking to oblivion.

Some Tories, still tipsy on their leader's speech, have begun to believe they will have the majority to go it alone after next May. The relationship with the LibDems was always a marriage of convenience and it is only due to extreme patience, some would say nauseating acquiescence, on the part of Mr Clegg and his lieutenants the connection has survived. In heart and mind, the Tories said goodbye to their Coalition partners long ago. The LibDems can be now be expected to act with all the righteous indignation of the scorned, asking voters to believe they were the mostly innocent victims of a necessary but ultimately bad marriage.

As he begins his fight back, one wonders if Mr Clegg will lavish on his Scottish leader the kind of affection David Cameron showed Scottish Conservatives' leader Ruth Davidson in Birmingham. He should, if only because Willie Rennie needs every assistance to raise his profile in what is an increasingly crowded and turbulent Scottish political scene.

Facing the prospect of an SNP going further to the left under Nicola Sturgeon, the Tories returning to the right, and Scottish Labour missing in action as per usual, Mr Rennie is living in interesting, potentially beneficial times. If a way can be found to go through the middle of the SNP and the Tories, his party's prospects might begin to look a fraction brighter. Then again, there are those Coalition years to explain. And the tuition fees U-turn, over and over and over.

Perhaps Mr Rennie, surveying the new troika of female leaders at Holyrood, would be better off buying a dress.