Clegg confirms his fiscal hawkishness

Nick Robinson’s documentary on the coalition negotiations is just under four hours away, but I suspect we’ve already heard about one of its key moments. As various outlets are reporting this afternoon, Nick Clegg tells Robinson that he had changed his mind about the pace of spending cuts sometime before the coalition agreement. Or as he puts it:

“I changed my mind earlier than that … firstly remember between March and the actual general election … a financial earthquake occurred in on our European doorstep.”

This matters because the Lib Dem manifesto said that spending shouldn’t be cut (above and beyond Labour’s plans) this year – and that the squeeze should wait until next year. So comes the question: was Nick Clegg deceiving voters during the election campaign? Labour say yes, but I think the issue is a little more complicated than that. The question should be something more like: does a party leader need to agree with every aspect of his party’s policy and, what’s more, announce it if he doesn’t? And I’m not sure there’s a clear-cut answer.