Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader, this morning ruled out giving up the trappings of coalition office before election day - despite engaging in open warfare with the Conservatives over Chancellor George Osborne’s austerity plans.
Asked by Labour MP Anne McGuire when he would give up the ministerial limousine and the red boxes, Clegg told MPs at Deputy Prime Minister’s Question Time that he takes pride in the government’s achievements even though “I disagree with the Conservative Party’s approach to carrying on with the cuts even after the deficit has been dealt with.”
In other words, despite attacking Cameron and Co, Clegg will continue in his role as Deputy Prime Minister until polling day, as will the other Lib Dem members of the coalition Cabinet - Vince Cable, Danny Alexander and Ed Davie.
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Clegg is opening himself to the charge of being two-faced. He was the first to complain yesterday about the Labour-Tory ‘Punch and Judy’ show after the two main parties traded “dodgy dossiers" over the economy and the NHS on the first day of the election campaign.
“A lot of the public must be thinking: 'You're joking – are we really going to have five more months of this to and fro between Labour and the Conservatives?’” said Clegg.
It’s actually four months, not five, but we get the point. Indeed much of the Fleet Street press shares Clegg’s criticism of the unedifying spectacle we witnessed yesterday on Day One of the campaign proper.
Rachel Sylvester in The Times said: “It was tit-for-tat mud-slinging of the worst kind with both sides condemning each other with some justification for publishing politically motivated lies.”
The Daily Mail ran an editorial under the headline ‘A dismal glimpse of the months to come’ asking: “Must we really endure four more months of this with the government effectively on hold and MPs on a two-and-a-half-day week?”
Little wonder that a new opinion poll from Ipsos-MORI finds that just 16 per cent of Britons trust politicians to tell the truth.
So far David Cameron has resisted the demands – backed by Ed Balls and reinforced yesterday by respected former Cabinet Secretary Lord (Gus) O’Donnell - for the statistics of all parties to be independently verified by the Office for Budget Responsibility. Surely nothing less will restore some public trust in politicians.
