There is something very Liberal Democrat about Nick Clegg’s Q&A session with party members at conference. There’s a distinct mix of familiarity, fondness—the loudest applause came for the announcement that today is Nick and Miriam’s 12th wedding anniversary and policy debate.
In response to a questioner who claimed that Danny Alexander was more right wing than ‘Peter Osborne’, Clegg was keen to stress to members that the coalition’s fiscal plans were more flexible than they are given credit for. But his declaration that there ‘won’t be a penny less of a penny more’ of spending cuts than those already agreed indicates that the Liberal Democrats will not accept any more reductions in government spending to hit George Osborne’s target of having the national debt falling as a percentage of GDP by the end of the parliament.
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