Lib Dems aren’t haranguing Nick Clegg. Makes a change

In the past few years, Nick Clegg has come to blows with his party activists at his annual conference question-and-answer session over the policies his party has had to support while in government. The Deputy Prime Minister has, at times, grown rather grumpy as the grassroots harangue him on issues they wish he’d show more of a backbone on. But he’s just emerged from today’s Q&A entirely unscathed. The only point of difference was over assisted dying, which is a free vote for MPs anyway, and which Clegg disagrees with.

But the Deputy Prime Minister didn’t even need to defend what his party did to activists. There are a number of reasons for this. The first is that the party is getting more comfortable with government, and of course the first few years would be rocky. The second is that the Coalition has moved on from the initial phase where the two parties appeared to assimilate, and into an openly fractious but internally comfortable relationship where differences are aired and Cabinet ministers swear at one another. The third is a little less noble: there aren’t really that many policies about in the final few months of this government that the Lib Dems are required to defend. All the talk is of what the two parties would do after the 2015 general election, and therefore it is quite easy for Clegg to criticise rather than feel he needs to back his partners up on anything.

Thus he even ended up agreeing with Evan Harris on the protection of journalists’ sources, and Harris even helped him out by using his supplementary question as a prompt for Clegg to have a go at the Tories and right-leaning journalists for wanting the abolition of the Human Rights Act.

So most of the Q&A was an opportunity for Clegg to say things that his party agreed with, accusing the Tories of trying to pull a fast one on English votes for English laws, claiming the Tories were blocking the publication of a report on drugs policy that Norman Baker had been pushing for, and describing Europe as a ‘political pygmy’ when it comes to the Middle East.

This the activists enjoyed, and Clegg seemed far more comfortable than in previous years. This cohabiting stage of coalition clearly suits the Lib Dems very well.