Jokes about their lock-in aside, today’s re-launch by Nick Clegg and Vince Cable apparently heralds the Deputy Prime Minister’s attempt to get the Lib Dems to take credit for policies announced in tomorrow’s Queen’s Speech. Reform of the pub sector is one of those policies – although wooing CAMRA members is a rather Lib Demmish thing to do (HQ sources tell me that they’ve never polled Lib Dem support among CAMRA members, though. Perhaps they should).
Beyond pubs, what the Lib Dems really need to do is to claim or at least share credit for the Coalition’s economic successes. Nick Clegg pleased his base but alienated the electorate with his ‘party of IN’ campaign, and then tried to recover from it by differentiating the Lib Dems from the Conservatives on international development spending. But these are concerns of the Lib Dem base, rather than the electorate as a whole.
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