Lib Dems were always going to ditch tuition fee pledges

Welsh Lib Dems hoping to kick over the traces must be in absolute despair at revelations in today’s Guardian that the party hierarchy planned to abandon tuition fees pledges before the election.

According to leaked documents, at the same time that Nick Clegg was telling students via YouTube how Lib Dems would “resist, vote against, campaign against” any lifting of a cap on tuition fees, party strategists working under negotiator Danny Alexander were actively seeking to dump any such commitment. The newspaper states that Alexander wrote on 16 March: "On tuition fees we should seek agreement on part-time students and leave the rest. We will have clear yellow water with the other [parties] on raising the tuition fee cap, so let us not cause ourselves more headaches."

Ironically, this timely exposure of Lib Dem duplicity comes from Conservative sources. Rob Wilson, MP for Reading East, has published a book, Five Days to Power, which includes interviews with 60 key figures involved in the coalition negotiations. The contents not only give the lie to Clegg’s accounts of how his party did a handstand over tuition fees but also flags up how Lib Dems made no attempt to uphold other election pledges such as seeking to introduce deficit reduction over a longer period.

The revelations are a further portrayal of a Lib Dem parliamentary group as two-faced opportunists with a crumbling moral mandate. The bad news is that it is Welsh Lib Dem candidates who will be first up in front of an electorate looking to get even.

Update: Rob Wilson twists the knife ever so helpfully in this Sky News interview.