Muhammedbutt

That EU referendum he almost wept salt tears for has been jettisoned now he can see Britain would vote to leave.

The promise to vote to scrap tuition fees turns out to have been a mishearing on behalf of the public: he meant that he would treble them.

The early spending cuts he warned against during the election campaign suddenly became absolutely essential the moment he was appointed Deputy Prime Minister. 

And the AV electoral system that he once condemned as a “miserable little compromise” became for a few weeks last spring the greatest thing since sliced bread: an absolutely essential constitutional innovation.

Well at least that didn’t last long, though he’s suddenly equally passionate about reforming the House of Lords. And Clegg is ratting on yet another policy: his support for the NHS Bill. 

Now he is keen to unpick parts of the legislation that he signed off as fine only months ago. Having sanctioned more competition in the NHS he is now opposing it. 

He is doing so because his own party and most of the public do not like the sound of the Bill. But it will do him no good at all because at least 90 per cent of the public know not to believe a word he says.

One Conservative Cabinet heard to say  that most Tory ministers are relaxed about the recent devious manoeuvrings of Clegg on the grounds that “it would be rude to interrupt an opponent when he is making a mistake”.

But Tory backbenchers are not so sanguine about the remarkable leeway David Cameron is according him. “A lot of us went on to the airwaves to bat for the health reforms and argued for things that are now being watered down at the behest of the Lib Dems. 

Many Tories are rueful about the passing of the Fixed Term Parliament Act that sets in stone the date of the next general election as May 7, 2015.

“If it wasn’t for that very few of us would think the coalition was worth persevering with for much longer,” says one influential Conservative MP. 

“The Lib Dems are now impeding many of the policies needed to get the country moving forward.”

Not only have the Lib Dems gone wobbly on NHS reform but some have also attempted to undermine welfare reform too, with Lib Dem minister Sarah Teather being given tacit permission to absent herself when Parliament was voting for a benefits cap.

SO it is not surprising that Conservative insiders say trust in the Lib Dems has collapsed. “They are always looking at the ‘grid’ of future announcements and trying to leak the ones that will be popular in a bid to grab the credit,” says one source in westminster. 

Clegg has half a dozen new advisers whose job is to find issues on which he can “differentiate” himself from Cameron in a bid to woo back voters who have left the Lib Dems for Labour. 

But it is not working – Lib Dem poll ratings stay stubbornly at 10 per cent or below.

“One problem is that Clegg has Paddy Ashdown dripping poison in his ear, telling him that he must think about his legacy every day and that if the Lib Dems lose MPs at the next election then he must at least be able to point to specific achievements of his own in government,” says another Tory insider.

The word being passed down from the Cabinet to the Tory troops is that in Clegg’s case revenge will be a dish best served cold.

“We will target Lib Dem seats ruthlessly at the next election. There will be no mercy,” says a senior minister. But it is unclear whether an increasingly fractious Tory Parliamentary Party is prepared to wait that long.