Battered by four years in coalition, Britain's Liberal Democrats on Wednesday set out dividing lines ahead of next year's election which they hope will boost their dismal poll ratings and allow them once again to play kingmaker. Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, closed the centrist party's annual conference in Glasgow with a strong defence of his time in government and a positive vision of why voters should back him in May.
He said the Lib Dems are "the only party who are as economically competent as we are socially fair", and promised an alternative to the "politics of blame and fear" he said were peddled by other parties. Support for the Lib Dems has collapsed since they joined Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative-led coalition in 2010 and agreed to implement unpopular spending cuts to help cut the budget deficit after the recession.
They are polling at just eight percent, putting them fourth behind the anti-immigration, anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP) - and causing predictions they could lose up to half of their 57 parliamentary seats. But the mood at the conference was upbeat, with most delegates insistent they could maintain enough MPs to hold the balance of power if neither the Tories or Labour win a majority in the House of Commons in the election.
Clegg acknowledged the party was no longer "untainted" as it was before it took office, but said he was "immensely proud" of what the Lib Dems had achieved. Many delegates here agreed and voiced hope of staying in power, whichever of the main parties wins the most votes next year. "Stability was the key and it was right to go in but it's cost us a lot," said David Patterson, a pensioner and lifelong Lib Dem activist from London.
He added: "May's a long way ahead. We want to be sharing power if we can." While the coalition still has seven months to run, senior Lib Dems have spent much of their time at conference stressing how different they are from the Tories. Clegg condemned Cameron's proposals for "unfair, unfunded tax cuts" for higher earners as well as the further squeeze he has promised on the welfare budget.
Clegg rounded on opposition Labour leader Ed Miliband for forgetting to mention the deficit in his own conference speech, saying he could not be trusted on the economy. And he condemned the "bitter tribalism" presented by both main parties and the Scottish Nationalist Party and UKIP. However, Lib Dem ministers have been careful not to give any "red lines" that might make any future coalition impossible.
The Lib Dems claim they have been a "restraining" influence on the Tories in the coalition and would do the same if they formed a government with Labour next year. But this has prompted criticism that they have no identity of their own - a concern not helped by the adoption by the Tories of a flagship Lib Dem policy, the raising of the income tax threshold to help low-earners. Clegg made only one new policy announcement in his speech, to introduce maximum waiting times for the treatment of mental health problems on the state-funded NHS, putting them on a level with physical problems for the first time.
For decades, the Lib Dems were Britain's party of protest, attracting students, anti-war campaigners and those who wanted to register their displeasure with mainstream politics. But many of these voters have now deserted them and Peter Kellner, the president of polling company YouGov, warned the party must get used to getting around 10 percent of the national vote. "That is your fate... It is the price you pay for no longer being an insurgent party," he told a fringe meeting.