MAJOR hat-tip to Big Bad Alastair Campbell (the link is to his blog; I don’t know how to link to his individual posts) for flagging up yet another example of LibDem hypocrisy.

Alastair points out that according to George Parker of the FT, “Senior Lib Dems whisper that Vince Cable, the Lib Dem Business Secretary, never really believed his pre-election rhetoric that cuts should be delayed until 2011.”

It may well be the case that this is simply the likes of Clegg and Laws – who are instinctively Tory politicians – trying to counter fears that Cable is unhappy with the Coalition of the Damned. Whether these “senior LibDems” are correct or not, the days of off-the-record briefings against government colleagues are still with us, despite Clegg’s promises to the contrary before the election.

And if the briefings are true, it doesn’t say much about Cable’s or his party’s integrity, does it? (And cue green-inked comments on the Lisbon Treaty by the dozen, not to mention the “It’s called ‘compromise’ and it’s what you have under coalitions”, arguments. Odd how “compromise” has been redefined by coalition supporters to mean the same as “lying”.)

As for Cable’s excuses for changing his mind on the wisdom of his own party’s manifesto commitments, we all know it’s a time-honoured part of the British constitutions for incoming governments to claim that everything’s much, much worse than they had expected it to be. But for Cable and Co. to renege on their campaign promises this quickly is… well, The New Politics, I suppose.

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