Childish childcare bickering continues

Last winter, the surest way to get a Lib Dem to ring you back was to mention the words ‘boundary changes’. Better still to write a piece criticising the party’s decision to scupper the reforms as a revenge for the collapse of Lords reform, and no matter whether it was late at night or early on a Saturday morning when all normal people are still hiding under their duvets or sitting self-consciously in independent coffee shops, the Lib Dems would ring very quickly indeed. The same thing is happening now over the plan to relax childcare ratios. This morning I wrote as a throwaway comment that the party was blocking a reform that it had initially given the nod to. Oh no, came the very swift Lib Dem response. This was Tory spin: ‘We agreed to a consultation and made it clear our support would be based on the result of that,’ says one source close to Nick Clegg.