Yep, they’re inescapable, those Lib Dems. Even when the airwaves are dominated by Rupert Murdoch and Tom Watson, they’re there in the background, quietly adding to the day’s pile of political news. We’ve got Ken Livingstone making a pitch for their votes in the London Mayor’s contest, for instance. And we’ve also got Nick Clegg on what seems like every radio show on air, giving his account of why folk should be Lib Dem voters in the first place.
There have been two more significant scraps of LibDemmery than those, though. The first came in one of Clegg’s radio appearances, when he said that he isn’t ‘hung up’ on who investigates Jeremy Hunt, whether it’s Lord Leveson or the independent adviser on the ministerial code, Sir Alex Allan. This matches his position of last week, of course. But some Lib Dems would probably like him to be firmer now, particularly because David Cameron made an important concession in this area yesterday, and because of today’s Murdoch brouhaha as well.
And then there’s Paddy Ashdown’s admission, in the Lords earlier, that he’s in favour of a referendum on Lords reform. On this issue, at least, it puts him in opposition to Clegg — who has previously said that, ‘I think to subcontract to the British people an issue which the politicians at Westminster just can’t deal with, I think is asking a lot of the British people’ — and in agreement with Ed Miliband. One to keep an eye on, this: how the Lib Dems and Labour line up over the Lords.
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