Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Bickering about bickering

Lib Dems are excitedly travelling to their Spring conference in York, which kicks off this evening with the traditional rally (hopefully a stand-up free one, though). Vince Cable and Tim Farron will be cheering the troops at tonight’s event, with Nick Clegg offering a Q&A tomorrow and his main speech on Sunday afternoon. Party figures expect the conference to be reasonably serene: there are no party rows this year, and the only real bickering is manufactured Coalition stuff, rather than a genuine crisis.

As I explain in my Telegraph column today, one of the things the Lib Dems are increasingly keen to do is to argue that key policies and government victories are all down to them. Danny Alexander will talk tomorrow about the ‘DNA of the recovery’ being a Lib Dem one, and the party is very keen to claim that city deals are all theirs.

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