As you and others have commented, Clegg’s description of liberalism was well balanced, and it certainly didn’t sound like the Tory version of “liberal”. The problem came with Clegg’s extended rant in condemnation of the State and all its works. When we have just accepted a massive state bail-out, and proposed a pretty statist “green road” policy, this makes us look pretty muddled.

I’m not, incidentally, the world’s greatest fan of state spending. When I used to serve on my local Borough Council, I often found myself, as a private industry Lib Dem, oddly to the “right” of our public-sector Tories, who were much more liable than I was to accept that every bright idea our officers had to spend more money should automatically be supported. I just think we need to live in the real world. That means not kidding yourself that the state can just wither away when blasted with the white heat of our liberalising torch!

While these town hall meetings are a good idea and something we should be doing more of, to what extent are they attracting people who are not already sympathetic to us? It seems to me that they’re likely to attract existing Lib Dem supporters. I think we need to give more thought to how we reach out to people who are not currently supporters but who could be persuaded to be.

The biggest single problem the party has faced over the last 30 years is the perception that we can say what we want because we will never be in power.

Articles like this put a gold embossed crest on that argument.

He also usefully clarified that economic liberalism is not, as it is characterised by Old Labour, some ultra-libertrian creed; but a tradition that believes in the market where it works and regulation where it fails.

http://www.libdems.org.uk/news/crime-must-not-end-hope-clegg-94838837;show

Clegg, in his Demos speech, has not a single good word to say for anything the State can do. Just to take one of the many anti-statism quotes:

“Liberal economics rests on the idea that we have to get the rules right. ….. What it does not believe is that the State should seek to micromanage the economy…”

And then Nick comes along the next day and tells the railways they should get 700 new carriages bought from public funds!

I know I eat too much food. I often talk about eating less. Or diet, or exercise. Does that make me a hypocrite or doing a u-turn if I also talk about eating food some of the time? Of course not.

Who said that? Some unreconstructed Socialist statist micro-manager, who has not yet realised that no mere politician should ever try to second-guess the free market?

The impression I got from the last policy document on this was that the funding was to come from “feed-in tariffs” – in other words, whatever external funding was needed would come from the consumer directly rather than from the government, through an increase in the price of electricity.

Effectively, the shift would be funded by a regressive tax – and the cost could be considerable if we are really talking about a large and rapid expansion in renewable energy. Is that a fair way of sharing out the cost of green energy?

This is interesting, because I had been surprised to see “green energy” among the things Clegg said the £12.5bn should be spent on, in his speech at the National Climate Change March earlier this month.

That had seemed to be a change from Vince Cable’s previous line that money should be borrowed to spend on “housing, transport and environmental works such as home insulation”.

Now spending on “green energy” seems to be off the menu again. The idea seems to be that we do without new nuclear and coal-fired power stations and make the UK independent of imported fuel by means of a massive expansion in renewable energy – but that this is all to be done without additional state funding. Is that really credible?

In terms of electryfication of the rail network I tend to agree though although Huw is right about the state it is in (which makes our position that private investment will save Royal Mail somewhat baffling) but that shouldnt preclude doing anything about it.

Rail investment is a very different issue, however. The rail network in this country is appalingly inefficient. It would be a bit of a waste of money!