Nick Clegg sets out red lines for coalition negotiations with Labour and the Tories

Nick Clegg produced Lib Dem red lines for any coalition with either Labour or the Tories in an interview with Evan Davis this evening. Clegg said that he wouldn’t go into Coalition with the Tories if they insisted on making £12 billion of cuts to welfare in the next two years. But he said that he also couldn’t recommend going into coalition with Labour until they were clearer about how they planned to deal with the deficit, making clear that what Labour said today was not sufficient.

As Fraser says, this was an assured performance from Clegg who offered a robust defence of the government’s record. The Liberal Democrats would be in a better position to claim credit for the recovery if they had always been this unequivocal.

When asked about tuition fees, he deftly used it as an opportunity to point out that while he has apologised for breaking his promise on that, Miliband hasn’t said sorry for Labour ‘crashing the economy’ and Cameron hasn’t for the Tories failure to bring immigration down to the tens of thousands.