Don’t be fooled by Clegg: new Tory pact is on the cards

Ignore the windy rhetoric from Nick Clegg about the mean, rotten, rich-loving David Cameron and his Tory cronies "beating up on the poor". The bones of a new Conservative/Lib Dem coalition are emerging.

Clegg has spent the weekend at his party's Glasgow conference slagging off the Tories for lurching to the right, promising tax breaks for middle-income earners while freezing welfare benefits for an extra two years – what he described on yesterday’s Andrew Marr Show as a “tax bombshell” for the poor.

The Lib Dem leader was at it again on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, accusing Tory Chancellor George Osborne of asking “only the working-age poor to pick up the tab for the mistakes made by the bankers in the past”. He made it sound like Osborne was King Herod, announcing the killing of the first-born.

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But look beyond the rhetoric and you find Clegg is proposing a one per cent limit on welfare increases, so the Lib Dems and Conservatives are actually pretty close on the issue.

Also, Clegg is not against an EU in-out referendum per se – indeed, he has been actively campaigning for one, he told the Today programme's Mishal Husain. It's all about timing: the Tory eurosceptics want the referendum regardless of Cameron's promised negotiation; Clegg wants one only when there is a proposed Treaty change. Again, there is not much between the two parties.

Even on the Lib Dems' proposal to impose a mansion tax on houses worth over £2 million there are the grounds for a deal.

The Tories have accepted the case for higher taxes on property purchases by rich foreigners, particularly in London. It is a short hop to accepting the case for adding a couple of bands to the council tax to increase the tax on homes that have soared in value.

Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator, tweeted that Clegg sounded as if he was "sitting over a pit of snakes... talking like a torture victim who wanted to blab but knew nothing."

Could that be because Clegg was trying to conceal the fact that he is pretty close to a deal with the Tories for a second coalition?

Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, picked this up on the Today programme though Mishal Husain seemed oblivious to it while she was doing the questioning.

Robinson said it is quite easy to see how another Conservative/Lib Dem coalition could work and that the Lib Dems are being careful not to say anything that would make a coalition impossible.

He acknowledged that it was difficult to get the electorate enthused about “moderation” as an idea: "What do we want? Moderation. When do we want it? Now.” That said, come polling day, it was easy to see voters backing a continuation of the coalition – with the Lib Dems “moderating” a second Cameron government - as an alternative to Ed Miliband’s Labour Party.

There is no doubt that one of the over-riding results of the party conference season, now over, is that Miliband has failed to convince as a PM-in-waiting. And among those left underwhelmed are senior Lib Dems - and some senior Labour figures.

Lord (John) Prescott, former deputy PM, used his Sunday Mirror column to accuse Miliband of being "too timid" and said that, as a result, the Labour conference had been flat. “If a Martian had landed on Earth and said ‘take me to your leader’, he’d have ended up a bit confused,” said Prezza.

As for the Lib Dems, while many in the party might lean to the Left – and indeed many have deserted in the wake of the May 2010 coalition deal, saying they feel more comfortable with Labour – there is a growing sensation that Lib Dem ministers are keener to do a new deal with the Tories than form a coalition with Labour.

As Philip Webster of The Times puts it, “You get the feeling from talking to them that some Lib Dem ministers would prefer working with the devil they know than a Miliband Labour government.”

Webster then quotes Lib Dem minister Norman Lamb voicing a nagging concern: "It is a political point, but it is one this party has to take very seriously. I'm afraid I don't see Ed Miliband as a prime minister."

But the Lib Dems aren’t going to be in much of a position to do a deal with either main party unless they can win back some of the 2.5 million Lib Dem supporters who lost faith over the 2010 coalition pact – enough to seriously impact on the coming general election: the Lib Dems could lose as many as half their seats according the latest polls, while the boost to Labour could see them taking several seats the Tories had hoped to win.

In short, as my colleague Don Brind pointed out last week, Clegg needs to win back his deserters – and Cameron needs him to succeed.

It is very likely that the word in Clegg’s ear from Downing Street before he travelled up to Glasgow went something like this: Be as beastly as you like in public. Just don't say anything that will prevent us doing a deal next May.