David Blackburn

The Liberal Democrat's party conference is the one occasion when they are guaranteed what they need most: publicity. This year has seen them dominate the headlines, albeit negatively. Unashamedly public in-fighting followed Nick Clegg’s extraordinary pronouncement about “savage cuts”. Steve Webb’s rejection of Clegg’s plans to tighten up ‘middle-class benefits’ and Charles Kennedy’s thinly veiled call to arms against the proposed abolition of the pledge to abolish tuition fees were minor squabbles compared to the Mansions tax debacle. Yesterday, I suggested the proposal was sensible; it isn't.

 A great piece of digging by the FT's Jim Pickard: 'In theory we won’t know the exact line-up at Labour Party Conference until the weekend. But I have it on good authority that David Miliband won’t be talking until Thursday - at which point most sane people will have packed up and gone home. Could this be some kind of punishment for his banana-wielding “disloyalty” at last year’s conference? Perish the thought.

A story that has escaped largely unnoticed this weekend is the creation of the Liberal Democrat party's sinisterly named ‘anti-Tory attack unit’. Sam Coates has the details in the Times: ‘Nick Clegg has created an anti-Tory attack unit which will focus Liberal Democrat firepower on exposing George Osborne’s “complete inexperience”. In an interview with The Times, Chris Huhne said that specialist staff will be seconded to the new group, which he will chair and will include all the party’s most effective attack dogs, including Norman Baker, Norman Lamb and Lord Oakeshott. Mr Huhne, the party’s home affairs spokesman, will lead the party’s attack at their conference, which begins today in Bournemouth.

It’s not often that a man who claims to have bedded and satisfied over 30 women declares that the nation is on the cusp of ‘its liberal moment’, and it’s drawn attention to the Liberal Democrats. With Labour seemingly returning home to the house that Jack Jones built, Nick Clegg should be sweeping the country, but his earnest predictions about a progressive liberal future have made no impression and his party still trails. Why are the Lib Dems doing so poorly? Lloyd Evans’ appraisal that they failed to use the expenses scandal to push their long-standing reform agenda has much to commend it. And today, Polly Toynbee writes a brilliant analysis in the Guardian, observing that the Liberals are caught between a split right/left voting base.

A Populus poll for The Times shows that the Conservatives are more trusted to run vital services than Labour. Here are the details: ‘The Tories are now in a strong position on most public services, which have traditionally been vote-winners for Labour. On doing the best job of improving the NHS, the Tories are on 37 per cent (up 10 points since last March) against 34 per cent for Labour (down 1 point).

On July 2nd, Gordon Brown told the House of Commons: “I have always told the truth and I've always told people as it is...we don't want to have the 10 per cent cuts the Conservatives are talking about.” The Tories’ extremely destructive Treasury mole has leaked documents proving that Labour has been planning substantial cuts in front line services since before the budget. The DEL figures, printed below, are key: suggesting that a cumulative 9.3% cut was planned for 2011-2014, and Paul Waugh is right to point out that these revelations may explain why the government delayed its comprehensive spending review.

Six months after a Politics Home/Spectator poll illustrated that ‘cuts’ was no longer a dirty word, Gordon Brown squared up and let slip the c-word. A new Politics Home ‘insider poll’ reveals that 86% of respondents believe Labour would be in a stronger position now if they had admitted the need for future cuts at the time of the Budget. That is almost certainly true: the obvious contrivance that was ‘Tory cuts versus Labour investment’, together with the invention of 0% rise economics, torpedoed the government’s credibility.