Life-and-death importance

Well, as Mandy Rice-Davies commented so memorably: "He would, wouldn't he?"

The Lib Dem leader sold the marriage of inconvenience with the Tories to his party on the basis that the coalition agreement is more than just a programme of cuts.

Clegg would have them believe that his unprincipled affair also embeds progressive Liberal Democrat values, including concern for the poor and vulnerable.

Deep down, most Liberal Democrats can see through this codswallop, but the glamour of having party leaders in Cabinet positions can help to blur even 20:20 vision.

While Liverpool City Council Liberal Democrat group leader Warren Bradley pronounced himself "physically sick" at the coalition government's decision to scrap the Labour government's Building Schools for the Future programme, others are prepared to declare that black is white for short-term ostensible gain.

Many Lib Dem organisations are actually passing off what is taking place as the enactment of their party's principles.

Take Cardiff Central MP Jenny Willott, who tells her constituents: "Despite this being a tough Budget, the Lib Dems have made sure that we continue the fight against child poverty. We will also invest in our schools to help children from all backgrounds."

Leave aside the fact that education in Wales is a devolved area, presumably the schools to which she refers are the same rundown schools in England that would have been replaced under Building Schools for the Future.

Willott defends the coalition budget as "a tough balance between putting the nation's finances back in order while investing in the jobs our country needs to grow. With Vince Cable MP as the new Business Secretary, the country is in safe hands."

Compare her complacency with Cllr Bradley's observation that "the funding of Trident and the war in Afghanistan costs hundreds of billions of pounds, so, if we cannot find £1 billion a year to improve children's education, then it's a sad indictment of the state of the government and the country.

"I will not be toeing the national party line just because we're in a weak coalition. That will deliver nothing to the Lib Dems except total electoral decimation."

And he adds the cheery forecast that, as an "absolute guarantee, we will be wiped out by Labour in the north and the Tories in the south."

If life was merely a soap opera about a party at odds with itself, this might all be an entertaining interlude, but the issues identified by the IFS, which confirm Budget criticisms previously made by the Morning Star and left-wing economists, are of life-and-death importance.

Outside the cosy Westminster village, the future is grim for many people, especially those who either work in public services or depend upon them for daily survival.

Low-paid public-service workers face lowered living standards because of a government-imposed pay freeze.

Their jobs, pensions and working conditions are all under threat, as are the services that they deliver to the poorest and most vulnerable in society, especially children and the elderly.

And this savage attack on the weak is designed to pay for the economic crisis unleashed by the finance sector, which escapes unscathed.

How can anyone with a crumb of decency or professed progressive principle defend such injustice?