Perhaps the most interesting political story of the weekend was Nick Clegg’s
political mentor, Paddy Ashdown rejecting the idea that the Lib Dems should be equidistant between the two main parties in an interview with The Times:
‘I don’t want to go back to using the word ‘equidistant’ because the world has changed.” He predicts that Labour will look increasingly like “a bunch of superannuated students shouting from the sidelines.’
There are two schools of thought in the Lib Dems about their approach to the next election. One has it that the party must appear equally prepared to do a deal with either of the main parties in the event of a hung parliament. This approach would make it difficult for Deputy Prime Minister Clegg to stay on as leader of the party to 2015; everyone would imagine his preference would be for the party that he’s worked with for last five years not the one that had spent the last five years vilifying him.
The other school of thought, of which Ashdown seems to be a member, argues that the aim should be to dismiss Labour as irrelevant and portray the Lib Dems as the mature, alternative to the Tories. That his mentor is endorsing this view, suggests that this is where Clegg is planning to take the party.
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