This Liberal Democrat conference is demonstrating that the last election result was actually a relatively simple one for the Liberal Democrats. The parliamentary arithmetic meant that the party only had to decide whether it wanted to be in government or not. No one in the party could accuse those who backed the idea of being ‘closet Tories’ because there was no Labour option.
Most Liberal Democrats, and particularly older ones, instinctively — and rather unthinkingly — rebel at the suggestion that they might actually want to govern with the Tories. Paddy Ashdown’s rage at The Observer on Sunday morning was over the fact that he felt the headline ‘Paddy Ashdown says Liberal Democrats could work again with the Tories’ implied that was what he wanted to do. It was anger at this suggestion that led to him telling
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