Day one of the Lib Dem conference, and the Tory jokes have started. At a lunchtime fringe event, of Labour and Lib Dems, the lights suddenly faded out and the room was plunged into darkness. ‘This must be the Tory cuts!’ said Ming Campbell, and the panel discussion continued by the gloomy light of the fire escape signs. It was a fairly jovial affair, but the mixture of names – Sir Ming, Jon Cruddas, Jo Swinson and Andrew Adonis – raised the deadly serious proposition of a Labour-Lib Dem coalition after the next election.
Cruddas sounded slightly off-message when he described the Liberal Democrats as the ‘benign’ force in the Coalition, preferring instead to criticise the direction of the Conservative party, particularly that being forged by its newest MPs in books such as Britannia Unchained, which he described as ‘frightening’.
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