"Never glad confident morning again" ?

Nick Clegg has made two historic errors.

Firstly, the referendum on AV should never have been held simultaneously with council elections. I always thought this was a mistake and hoped the House of Lords might succeed in forcing a delay. This vital issue was subsumed into the party political battle. Voting "No" became a way of punishing the Liberal Democrats. Campaigners' efforts were diverted from the referendum to local elections. The only material on AV delivered where I live was council election leaflets with a Tory footnote NO and a Lib Dem footnote YES.

The second error was as bad. The identity of the Liberal Democrats has vanished. Voters cannot discern what makes Liberal Democrats different from Conservatives. It is whistling in the dark to cite the shopping list of policies which are supposed to form 75% of our manifesto. They do not amount to a visible Liberal Democrat narrative. They weigh as nothing against the two policies which were not in the manifesto - raising tuition fees and rapid, unfair deficit reduction risking a double-dip recession.

At our special conference to ratify the coalition agreement, I asked if our reaction should be "Never glad confident morning again". I don't know if anyone recognised the poem by Robert Browning. It is called "The lost leader" and mourns the desertion of William Wordsworth to the conservative cause. Read it here.

Time now to show that we are different. Coalition -yes, Cosmetic for the Tories - No.

Coalition: Special Conference speech

What do we think of this coalition ? Some will say with Wordsworth, "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven". Others with Browning, "Never glad confident morning again". I go with Longfellow, "Life is real and life is earnest". Sadly however, while we campaign in poetry, we govern in prose. I wanted a progressive alliance but there were two problems, quantity and quality. There weren't enough Labour MPs and Labour wasn't progressive.

This is a Westminster coalition, not a merger. We know that Liberal ministers will be bound by collective cabinet responsibility and that the whips will try to restrain Liberal MPs, but Liberal MEPs in Strasbourg will not be restrained, Liberal councillors in Birmingham, Sheffield, Edinburgh and Cardiff will not be restrained and above all our party will not be restrained.

Charlie Kennedy is afraid of being swallowed up. Well I'm not. The Liberal Democrats are not. Paddy says he's confused. I'm not confused. Paddy was at my wedding at a Quaker meeting. One of the elders addressed the congregation and invited them all to stand and speak if they wished to. I looked at the crowd of Liberals and thought, "We'll be here all night". You cannot shut Liberals up and you shouldn't try.

As Liberals grasp the reigns of power, they should continue to reach for their ideals. I hope Robert Browning will forgive me when I say, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp or what are the Liberal Democrats for ?"