Morning Line: How can Nick Clegg sleep at night?

It is true, they dealt with the devil and loss there princeables for a few cabinet positions.

This budget would be ok 10 years ago when there was a free market, however, the free killed itselfs and only the government can stop it falling off a tall cliff.

Brilliant budget. Stop the politics and hope it works.

Of course he sleeps well, he obviously has no conscience.

Perhaps Marshall Petain and the other French wartime collaborators slept well to start with - though we know that did not end well. What about the Vichy Lib-Dems?

Of course Nick Clegg will sleep at nights, this budget was the only way to go and the Coalition needs congratulating on their efforts to get us back into a world of some financial sanity. Of course Nick and his chums are waiting for the big fat pay back, remember the promised vote on proportional representation? I wonder.

As a LibDem I have no problem with this budget. The position discovered by David Laws was far worse than anything any of us had been led to believe, and swingeing cuts in government expenditure are essential. Labour can huff and puff all they like about the LibDems selling out, but if Brown had won the election they would be doing much the same because there isn't an choice.

Well there is, of course; you can keep spending, ignore the markets, pay higher interest on government borrowings and eventually bust the currency and the country. No problem really, because then you don't pay the salaries of teachers, doctors, nurses etc., pensions aren't paid and because of devaluation of the currency supermarkets have little imported food and so people go hungry.

Personally I think Nick Clegg can sleep easy knowing that the alternative really would have hurt thye most vulnerable in our society.

The Cleggite branch of the Lib Dems are just Tories by another name. The only reason, as he has admitted, that David Laws joined the Lib Dems instead of the Tories was the homophobia of many in the Tory party. He is a banker afterall. Clegg would also like to do away with the welfare state, especially the Health Service replacing it with American style insurance. These people are more right-wing than many Tories. So I imagine he sleeps very well at night. The only surprise is that anyone might think otherwise. The only question is what will all those disillusioned Lib Dems do at the next ballot.

This budget was clearly designed to put the Tories in position for a big George Bush style tax give-away for their well-heeled supporters before the next election in hopefully 5 years, assumimg they last that long. They just took a calculated risk that the budget would not crash the economy first. I think the calculation was that if the economy crashes they lose next time, if the economy recovers well but still to much debt for a give-away budget they lose next time so why not go for broke and risk a 30s style recession caused like then by excessive cuts. As a party they have nothing to loose. As for the rest of us that's an entirely different matter...

Glad I don't need a job anymore!

Mr Bonsignore I think you have pretty well summed it up, the LibDems - at least some of them - have at last faced up to the realities of government, though inevitably many are more comfortable to stay in their navel gazing cocoons. Personally I have always thought the party an irrelevance, a party only for the irreconciled and indecisive, and that their constituents should join left or right according to individual taste. Nick clegg seems to be a realist and being a politician is hungry for power. I don't imagine he loses too much sleep over the the new politics.

The liberal element in the government now should provide a beneficial temper for the right in politics, but how it might develop in future is a difficult guess; the coalition is after all an ad hoc construct for the moment and cannot be banked upon.

Further thoughts, perhaps coalitions between parties are the way for the future in politics and might not be such a bad thing after all, it could bring together all of the best ideas into a coherent body to govern, though judging by some of the fatuous tribal/partisan commentary one reads, that is not an easy conjecture. inevitably, one party will be dominant in any coalition; gathering together the best representative wishes of the electorate is one thing, but a government can't have two heads.

If coalitions are seen as the accepted way forward there are likely to be reallignments of party preferences by the electorate and we might see the disappearence of the don't knows.

The final outcome of the present coalition will be interesting, as far as the lib dems are concerned it has moved fruitless argumentation outside of government and put it into a productive debate within government; no doubt some my not have the stomach for it for long and go off somewhere, but one has the feeling that while Nick Clegg is there the arrangement can work.

The reality of rule has come home for the Lib/Dems and I think their influence on the budget is far greater than first meets the eye, and perhaps not a bad thing to counter Tory excesses).

Need to get the finances on a good footing before pressing for a greater socialist agenda.

I see that the £1000 exemption as a step in the right direction and that there is more to come (when things are easier) and they reigned in perhaps more rightist agendas (no I am not carping, it balanced a stronger attack on waste excess).

Clegg et al should be able to sleep the sleep of the righteous, and the Tories will no doubt benefit.

Realsim has dawned, but not for Zanuliebore, but note the difference, they are not being asked, as was Brown's wont, what they would have done. They merely carp, and provide nothing positive as is their obligation for the good of the country. Their agenda is merely self serving, contributing no good, as they have not done for the last 14 years.

The reply, if it be such was delivered by a small soft down featherweight called Harrieden, and she was shrieking to disguise her ineptitude, when it should have been delivered, if we are to believe the left, the unchallengeable(?) towering (?) intellect (?) of Comrade MugabeBruin personally, I believe he is of the same weight as the Harridan, he just makes more noise, albeit in the lower ranges of the scale, and can add a lot of dodgy facts and figures, massaged beyond recognition. All he is good for is fiddling the figures and his expenses, his 2 kitchens, but then he was doing the usual thing of fiddling, his salary, skulking cravenly and lily livered north of the border (?) fearing to revisit the scene of so many of his crimes and wrongs against the nation. Mind you he was no doubt collecting his ministerial pension + prime ministerial pension AND £173.97 daily salary (on q 7 day week, or £313,94 pd for a four day week) and pension contribution to another pension (£20,000+++), and of course "expenses" and the cost of his 'security' (damn that, let him suffer the same risks we do as a result of his 'Balls' ups). Kick him out for criminal activities and dereliction of duty, now and before.

A good start, and more savings to be made.

PS the navigation of the comment box could be made more easy and navigable to allow for a proper checking. Lot of work to be done.

I voted lib dem for the first time. Never again. I would rather vote tories who are at least honest.

Nick Clegg and most of his senior lib-dems siezed the opportunity offered by the Tories for some taste of power which they have never dreamed of attaining and if Nick Clegg had not joined there was a very possibility of his been thrown out of the leadership for his party's failure at the election despite his triumph on the election debates. Also Cameron was very desperate for power and did all he can with some of his senior party members to give in to some of Lib Dem demands which by the recent budget, Lib Dems gained very little. He too could have lost his leadership role of the tory party, hence the desperation for coalition because both were losers at the election hiding behind the deficit as a means of forming the coalition.

Labour had plans to cut deficit by 20% and the tory budget is cutting it by 25%. To say Labour was going on spending is all fallacy.

It is a shame that Cameron , Clegg and their ministers keep comparing Britain situation with Greece, what a load of nonsence, it shows they are still novices on finanacial know how. Most of the western nations are in debt and if they all decide to have strict budgets, where is the growth going to come from, therefore more unemployment