The Sketch: There is a word for Lib Dem policy but it's not creative

The creative tension in the Lib Dems is getting more creative. That, if history teaches us anything, will make it more destructive. At least the rest of us will have something to laugh at.

Linguistic analysis of the Liberal Democrats shows that the party is made up of two factions. You've got your Liberals who now believe they've always believed in liberty, and the lefty Democrats who've always believed in telling everyone else what to do. Lib Dem strategists have decided that the left has now exhausted its electoral potential and they're after the Tory voters who defected to Blair. What a filthy, ghastly, cynical business politics is. I'd go into it myself if I weren't so fat and lazy.

In order to attract Tory voters, political rhetoric is veering to the right.

Normal analysis would suggest that policy is veering sharply to the left.

And so it proves. Just underneath the surface we can discern a thumping rise in taxation (local income tax, anyone?) and a vicious transfer of power to the political class. This is how the executive can appeal to freedom-loving Tories while retaining the totalitarian lefties that form most of their membership.

Bill Clinton called it "triangulation". Tony Blair calls it "squaring the circle". We can call it "electoral fraud".

Chris Huhne pitched the party's big idea to its conference. It's to earmark national insurance for the health service. This will reduce the alienation of people from the tax system. It will prevent politicians interfering with NHS funding. And it will, like the candy that cleans and straightens your teeth, remain a comic fantasy. None the less, it was a pleasure to be caressed by Mr Huhne's voice and to have my pain felt by his big, spaniel eyes. He will remain the Lib Dems' most attractive MP until Daisy Sampson finds her seat.

Vincent Cable is an under-rated sort of fellow; perhaps because he looks like an undertaker. He's the spokesman for Trade and Industry. He's an old Social Democrat but favours the sort of free trade that old Liberals did (I'm talking very old Liberals, active circa 1870). He has come up with a terrific proposal for the department he may one day inherit. Total abolition, immediately.

A number of Lib Dems are talking in terms of tearing up Whitehall. It certainly appeals to the vandals among us. But then they want to give Whitehall's powers to local government. Where, by a curious coincidence, Liberal Democrats are particularly strong. So, instead of being pushed around by remote and faceless bureaucrats we're to be pushed around by those of our neighbours who can't get a proper job.

All these proposals are essentially more of the same: the political class will be responsible for spending the money. Actual reform would mean we spend the money (or vouchers) on the school, the doctor, the pension fund that we choose for ourselves. All the rest is rhetoric. Or, as political scientists call it, bollocks.

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