Lib Dem inconsistencies of policy get no coverage on the BBC

The BBC are endlessly looking for dividing lines within the Conservative Party: on the EU, the NHS, public spending etc.

Meanwhile a newspaper spots a Lib Dem dividing line that the BBC will ignore. Sam Coates reports that:

"Vince Cable on the Today programme: "One has to look at everything, it isn’t sensible as I think the Conservatives are doing, to say that you know, there are certain areas we cant go anywhere near which of course means that the pain everywhere else is much greater. I think we have to look at everything."

Nick Clegg in the TES (in an article headlined "Lib Dems will ringfence education cash, claims Clegg") the party leader responds to a question about education spending: “We won’t cut. Absolutely nothing could be more important. We’ve got this ballooning structural deficit, which means we will not be able to pay for things in the way we did before. That is a fact and we need to learn to abandon some policies and funding pledges we’ve made in the past. That will be painful for us and painful for all the parties. But one of the things I’m absolutely adamant about is that it would be madness to cut support for schools in order to deal with the poisonous legacy of this recession.”

Other parties would be taken apart if they made this kind of mistake..."

Almost right, although I would argue that in reality only (of the three main parties) the Conservative Party would be taken apart for such differences of policy. Indeed if you look at the coverage of Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown's recent attitude to cuts and the way the BBC have reported it you will see coverage based upon nods and winks and genial good humour as Gordon Brown is carefully lead to his new position.