Steeped in cynicism

Those attending would have to be political mugs to place any reliance on Clegg's rhetoric about taxation and social justice finding reflection in government policy.

Once the Brighton pantomime is over, Liberal Democrat Cabinet members will return to their snug chairs at the top table and continue helping the Tories make working people pay for capitalism's crisis.

If this sounds cynical, is it any more so than Clegg's so-called apology over student tuition fees?

His "apology" wasn't based on breaking the Liberal Democrat pledge not to support any increase in tuition fees but on having promised such a policy in the first place.

The clear implication is that, after Labour and Tories blotted their copybook with students by backing tuition fees, the Liberal Democrats scented electoral advantage in empty promises.

It didn't need Clegg's embarrassing video to reveal that the party leadership was never serious about the policy.

That much was laid bare by the performance of Danny Alexander who, in negotiating the coalition agreement with George Osborne, didn't mention the pledge, much less fight for it.

It was political window dressing for the hard of thinking just like Clegg's bunny about a mansion tax, a "fairer" economy or a veto on further welfare cuts without increased taxation on the super-rich.

The Liberal Democrat leader bleats about so far having failed to convince those beneficiaries of significant inherited wealth Osborne and David Cameron to accept a mansion tax.

Well, what a surprise. Whoever would have expected that the people who, with Liberal Democrat collusion, drove through a reduction in the top rate of income tax from 50 per cent to 45 to benefit the top 1 per cent of the population would oppose such a necessary reform?

Clegg won't veto any aspect of government policy because he signed up to it in the coalition agreement.

He knows that barely a fifth of the planned cuts have been implemented so far and that a further £14 billion is to be slashed from the public sector this financial year alone.

Who does he think depends on the services that are being depleted? Who will bear the brunt of the benefit cuts taking effect next April?

There is no fairness in the government's fiscal and economic policies.

The concept is alien to the Tory leadership and Clegg has sullied the name of his party for many people who entertained illusions about its commitment to social justice or human concern for the poorest people in society.

The Liberal Democrat leader seeks to curry favour with his party by declaring that it will not be "bound hand and foot" to Tory spending plans beyond 2015-16.

Should we be grateful for small mercies? By that time, the demolition job on the NHS, the welfare state, public services and working class living standards will be all but complete.

Clegg's political career will be dead in the water, but that will be little consolation as he accepts his big business reward for services rendered.

The battle to resist the cuts agenda requires a massive turnout for the October 20 TUC protests and greater co-ordinated industrial action against the coalition onslaught.