The price of opportunism

The Lib Dem Spring Conference has been an absolute joy to follow - if you are of a vindictive cast of mind or enjoy watching people suffering the consequences of treachery, betrayal and political opportunism.

Because what this conference has revealed is a party torn asunder, with no credibility left at all - even with its own members.

It's not something that the Lib Dem leadership can claim was not foreseeable, either. Even a very stupid politician could have expected painful and unpleasant consequences from getting into bed with the Tories, and that means that it certainly wasn't beyond the Lib Dem great and good.

But what goes around comes around, as they say. The Lib Dem leadership abandoned any claim to principle and any right to call themselves democrats by rushing gleefully into an illicit relationship with Cameron's unattractive mob for just a vicarious taste of parliamentary power, leaving their principles behind them in a tangled and discarded heap on the political bedroom floor in their haste.

So now they are paying the price for such unseemly behaviour. Party president Tim Farron probably put it as well as anyone could when he pinpointed Cameron as wrong in claiming that multiculturalism had failed and wrong in advocating NHS privatisation.

And the conference backed that simple analysis, damning Tory Health Secretary Andrew Lansley's vicious attack on the health service.

Lib Dem grandee and former Cabinet minister Shirley Williams warned that the "accountability proposals of the new structures are lousy" and private firms would "cherry-pick" any profitable services, while St Ives MP Andrew George claimed that the Lib Dems risked becoming "architects of the NHS demise."

With no hint of irony, the benighted Mr George insisted that "joining the coalition does not mean we have to turn into forelock-tugging automatons," which, it has to be said, is precisely what the Lib-Dems in Parliament have become already.

The conference organisers had, in the week before conference started, lived in fear of an angry demonstration outside its doors and they certainly got it.

But they need not have concerned themselves so much, because the anger inside almost exceeded the rage of the protesters outside.

But the delegates really ought to accept that there's no point in damning the senior partners in the governing coalition and all their works if your own party is falling over itself to support them in blatant attacks on working people and on the whole welfare state.

What might in other circumstances be praiseworthy anger and righteous indignation becomes merely blatant hypocrisy when what you are damning is being done with your own party's imprimatur.

One protester outside held a placard informing delegates that, "if you're not angry yet, you're not paying attention." But anger in such circumstances would also mean that the Lib Dems aren't paying attention to their own leaders' misdeeds.

There's only one thing that could possibly convince the electorate of Lib Dem good intentions and that's withdrawal from this evil and malicious coalition.

And since there's little or no likelihood of Clegg and Co abandoning their Tory masters, the Lib Dem councillors up and down the country had better prepare themselves for a rough ride in the local elections and disappointment over their shoddy little AV compromise.

They've backed their leaders in a shabby adventure in expediency and they will pay the electoral price.

Morning Star Editorial.