David cameron

As the chances of AV passing diminish, the Lib Dems are complaining with increasing volume about just how directly Nick Clegg is being targeted. Up to now, they have kept their concerns about what, they are calling, the swift boating of Nick Clegg relatively private. Last night, Chris Huhne said that he was “shocked that coalition partners can stoop to a level of campaign that we have not seen in this country before”. This morning, Paddy Ashdown has follow up on his phone call to Nick Robinson with a demand that David Cameron disassociate himself from the No campaign’s attacks on Clegg. This isn’t going to happen.

David Cameron turned in an emollient performance on the Today Programme this morning. He declined to stoke the coalition row over immigration, heaped praise on Vince Cable and stressed that the Liberal Democrats have been good coalition partners. Even when pressed on the question of whether Britain would block Gordon Brown from becoming director of the International Monetary Fund, Cameron spoke softly. The only line of questioning in the interview that discomforted the Prime Minister was when Evan Davis pressed him on why a localist government was placing restrictions on what local government could charge residents for recycling or rubbish collection.

It must be Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau season at the Commons' film club. A string of odd political couples has stalked stages across the land this morning, supposedly pronouncing the merits or demerits of the alternative vote. David Cameron and John Reid were the oddest: the Prime Minister’s well-heeled insouciance contrasting with his lordship’s winking Glaswegian charm. It’s good fun, without being hugely constructive. Cameron and Reid joked that they agreed on nothing beyond FPTP, before embarking on a distended muse about party politics and that old canard 'Britishness'. Things were little better for Ed Miliband, who spent a large portion of his conference listening to Vince Cable explain why he wasn’t resigning from the government.

This morning’s battle of the political odd couples shows the dangerous direction in which the AV referendum is going for the coalition. The Yes campaign are becoming ever closer to making explicit the argument that a yes vote is the best way to keep the Tories out. For their part, the No side are continuing to hammer the compromises of coalition and the unfairness of the party in third place determining the result. In other words, no more Lib Dems in government. These campaign strategies mean that the result of the referendum will be seen as a decisive rejection of one side or other of the coalition.

There is no rest for the Prime Minster. After delivering his speech on immigration in Romsey this morning, there was another to deliver, 62 miles away in Woking, this afternoon. This second CamSpeech of the day was billed as a scene-setter for the local elections — and so it proved. Rather than dwelling on a single policy area, the main purpose was to rattle through 101 reasons to vote Tory on 5 May. If there is anything to be taken from the text, it is just how upfront and unapologetic it is. There is little room for nuance, but plenty of room for sweeping, and forceful attacks, on Labour. This passage stood out: "I think we should remember how far we’ve come.

Vince, it seems, is Vince. But Britain is not alone in struggling to arrest immigration. A mass of displaced North Africans is descending on Malta and Italy. The United Nations estimate that more than 20,000 people have already landed this year and many more expected. Neither Malta nor Italy can cope alone. On Monday, Malta called for the EU to invoke a 2001 directive that grants migrants temporary protection in cases of ‘mass influx’. Italy also petitioned Brussels to spread the physical burden. The EU did not acquiesce in either case, which especially outraged the Italian government: both Berlusconi and immigration minister Maroni said that the European Union stands and falls together, and they threatened to withdraw.