The Liberal Democrat Press Office Twitter account rather optimistically thought that Nick Clegg was going to be talking about the party’s new Million Jobs campaign. As it happens, the G8 summit, snoopers’ charter and Syria took up all the time available.
On Syria, he said that any intervention should be thought through carefully and worked out on an international basis. He described the idea that Britain could solve things by unilateral military intervention as “fanciful.”
On the Snoopers’ Charter, he repeated his stance that the idea of keeping every website we visit is both disproportionate and unworkable and that knee jerk reactions like 90 day detention and control orders were to be avoided.
He was pretty robust on pensioners’ benefits, too, saying that he didn’t see why people on low incomes paying taxes should be subsidising Winter Fuel Allowance for rich pensioners, some of whom don’t even live here.
It was a strong performance, even if he didn’t get to talk about his new major campaign.
I’ve put together a few tweets from the interview so you can get a flavour of what he said. You can read it here.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings