CAN IT BE TRUE?

by RAY FLEMING
IF I were a card-carrying member of the Liberal Democrats I would by now have cut my card into little pieces and mailed them to Mr N Clegg at party headquarters. No wait. I would have put the scissors beside the card and waited to hear Mr Clegg's interview on BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour tomorrow night at 11pm just in case the advance reporting of the interview has been inaccurate. Can he really have said that electoral reform is not his “sole purpose in life”? Of course it can't be but most Lib Dem members believe it to have been the main political goal of the party for decades and the strongest reason for joining a coalition with the Conservatives. Yet, after four months, here is their leader also saying that he would not leave the coalition just on account of the Conservatives blocking the proposed referendum on the Alternative Vote system of voting. The line that Mr Clegg seems to be taking at the moment is that if the Lib Dems were not in the coalition with him as Deputy Prime Minister nobody would be taking any notice of them. That is probably true but the searchlight shining on their cohabitation with the Conservatives is not doing them any good at all with polls showing their support at a lowly 18 per cent. Scissors at the ready!