Nick Clegg and the Jilted Bride

The Lib Dem press office is one of the sorriest sights in Westminster. A handful of untrained party officers are dealing with a wave of hostility nothing in their right-thinking, left-leaning lives has prepared them for. They thought that they were good. For as long as they can remember everyone they have met has assured them that they were good. Tories were mean and greedy, New Labour was authoritarian and war-mongering. They, by contrast, had always been the nice people in the nice party – maybe a little silly, maybe a little naïve, but fundamentally decent.

Now they are hated. As my colleague Julian Glover reports in the Guardian today:

‘While 91 percent of the 2010 Conservative voters would vote that way again, and 93 percent of 2010 Labour voters, only 47 percent of 2010 Lib Dem voters plan to do the same.The impact of the party’s U-turn on tuition fees is clear.