To govern is to choose: it’s a lesson the Lib Dems are learning the hard way

James Forsyth reviews the week in politics

‘Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government,’ David Steel told the Liberal Assembly in 1981. Twenty-nine years, six leaders and a merger with the Social Democrats later, the party is at last in government, but not in the way it had hoped.

The Liberal Democrats have historically prescribed higher spending as the cure for most government problems. Yet today, in coalition with the Conservatives, they are proposing the largest public spending cuts since the 1920s (the last Lib-Con government).

So far, the Liberal Democrats have held it together. Not a single parliamentarian has defected. Only a few councillors have quit. But the same cannot be said for the party’s supporters. The army of new Lib Dem supporters, who appeared from nowhere in the aftermath of the ‘I agree with Nick’ election campaign debates, have vanished — along with many of the party’s previous supporters.