Clegg, on fine form, tells his party to move on

“We’ve got to stop beating ourselves up,” Clegg just told Lib Dem members in a Q&A session. As is traditional at these events, Clegg spent a lot of time trying to explain to his party why the coalition is doing what it is doing. The tone of the event was, perhaps, best summed up by the Deputy Prime Minster telling one hostile questioner to listen to his answer.

Clegg, in head-masterly form, started by reminding the audience that if the coalition was not dealing with the defitict of its own volition, the bond markets would be forcing it to and “you can’t do anything  good if you have no control over your own destiny.” In terms of news, there was an announcement about a new DFID funded girls’ education fund for the developing world and a commitment to “kick-start proper ambitious house-building”.

But, perhaps, the most important message that Clegg wanted to get across to his party was about their campaigning strategy.