Credit to Clegg

CONSIDERING that Nick Clegg addresses this week's party conference as the first Liberal to hold high political office since David Lloyd George in 1922, it might be thought that the rank-and-file would offer him the warmest of welcomes. That this appears not to be the case, however, reflects far more badly on Liberal Democrat members than it does on their leader.

Over the past 88 years, Britain's third party has come to see itself as just that – an organisation of increasing political irrelevance in which unrealistic ideas could be discussed and even adopted as party policy. Under Mr Clegg, however, all this had begun to change even before the party entered into coalition government with the Conservatives.

It is precisely because the Sheffield Hallam MP led the Lib Dems into jettisoning their penchant for tax-and-spend policies, instead emphasising fiscal restraint, lower taxes and public-service reform, that Mr Clegg was able to do a deal with David Cameron in May and take his party into government.

It is as a result of this that genuinely liberal ideas, such as lifting those on low incomes out of tax, are being put into practice and that a referendum on Britain's electoral system, the Lib Dems' long-cherished goal, is due to take place next year.

If Mr Clegg expects gratitude and appreciation from his party, however, he is likely to be disappointed. In part, this is because Lib Dem members are increasingly alarmed by their party's slump in the polls. Yet it is also a reflection of how the party had retreated into a Left-wing comfort zone, one in which the purity of its ideas would never have to be contaminated by the reality of making hard choices. As Mr Clegg is demonstrating, however, government is the business of hard choices, particularly when there is an urgent need to resolve the crisis of the public-sector deficit.

Yet being in government is also an opportunity to make Britain a freer and fairer society, one more in tune with traditional liberal values. Mr Clegg recognises this. His problem, however, is that it is far from certain that his party does.