Nick Clegg is setting out what the Lib Dems stand for

What is Nick Clegg up to? He held a press conference today to tell us that his party’s manifesto will be a Lib Dem manifesto, not a manifesto aimed at a partnership with Labour or the Tories. And he announced that his party will ring-fence education spending for two-to-19-year-olds in the next Parliament. The Liberal Democrat leader told the assembled hacks that Britain needed to move from ‘austerity to ambition’, another fortune cookie phrase presumably cooked up by whoever thought ‘Alarm Clock Britain’ made sense. Clegg said:

‘As we look towards 2015, it’s clear to me that Britain doesn’t want or need simply more of the same. The Conservative party will tell you everything is fine, let’s just carry on down the tramlines of permanent austerity. But once the books are balanced, as they must be and will be if Liberal Democrats are in government, in my view it would be wrong to carry on with austerity as usual.