Friday 10th January

Nick Clegg is embarking on a bit of a charm offensive, trying to distance the Lib-Dems and specifically himself from the Tories.   Fat lot of good it will do him.  Even at the last pre-coalition election they lost both votes and seats.  The people who voted for them by and large did so, not because they ever thought that they would see Nick Clegg riding in a ministerial limousine, or even a whisper of an idea that they might form the Government or even be a tiny part of a coalition, but because they were neither Tory or Labour.

The Lib-Dems can argue all they like that if they hadn’t been part of the coalition the Tories would have been even nastier, but the actual perception is that the Lib-Dems have allowed the Tories to be as nasty as they have been.  As Charlie Kennedy, the best leader they ever had, argued at the time – rather than go into coalition the Lib-Dems should have allowed the Tories to run a minority Government on a bill-by-bill basis.  In other words they would have been far more powerful outside the Government than inside it.

The measures that were never in the Tory manifesto such as the restructuring of the NHS would never have happened.  The rushed and botched attempt to bring in Universal Credit would have been slowed down, and maybe amended.  The madness of the Austerity announcements and the sense of doom and gloom in 2010 would have been avoided.  The recovery may have started far earlier, and the Lib-dems may have been perceived as Heroes and not Villains.  But there is no way back for them now.  It may be that they will still have enough MPs after 2015 to help form another Coalition.  And a fat lot of good that will do them too.