First of all, the media have mostly focused on Cable’s remarks about Rupert Murdoch and the bid to take over BSkyB (and only for that was he punished, losing his responsibility for broadcast and media competition) while I think the comments revealed the day before about his own ‘nuclear power’ in bringing down the coalition are more revealing of the political attitude that some members of the Lib Dem party have in relation to the coalition government. It shows, in the end, a major division within the Lib Dems.

Cable’s approach to dealing with the coalition aims to score some symbolic points in order to be able at the next election to claim a role for the Lib Dem team in achieving this specific results, regardless of the general approval for the coalition’s achevements. It is a short-sighted approach and, at a certain point in the future, it is doomed to clash with Nick Clegg new strategic vision.

Clegg has realised that moaning in private about the coalition or achieving some good results for the party is not enough: since the Lib Dems have decided to stick with the Tories, at the next election they will not be judged only on the basis of their adherenceto their 2009 election manifesto, but also in regard to the general achievements of the coalition: the good old days of the third party challenging both Labour on social justice, and the Conservatives on economic competence are definitively off.

The deputy prime minister is aware that for the Lib Dems winning some symbolic battle would be useless if in the end the coalition won’t win the war and, as a whole, won’t gain the support of the electorate. For him now the coalition is no longer a necessary tactic but a strategic compromise: for this reason he stopped acting as a leader of a minor partner and started behaving as the deputy leader of the whole coalition. However, he still has to win the argument within his party members, and this leaves room of manoeuvring for the Labour party.

A second issue that has been not fully analysed is the role played in this case by the two undercover journalists: we liked reading what Cable said to whom he thought were two disaffected constituents and we fully appreciated the irony of a minister proclaiming himself almighty when, in fact, was just risking losing his job. Having said that, what the two reporters did was just a dirty trick. As a journalist, I feel that what is at stake is not just the reputation of two colleagues and their editor, but the relationship between journalists and politicians and ultimately the role of media and the morality of their behaviour.

In a political world dominated by spin doctors and top-down control of the information, it is important to have investigative journalism and first-hand information about what politicians really think and do, but this goal cannot be achieved through means that are morally unclear, taking advantage of private conversations under false pretences in surgeries that are supposed to be dedicated to constituents. This angle, however, has been glossed over and forgotten. The impact on how MPs speak with their constituents, and how open they feel in doing so, may last a lot longer…

We need to unmask and fight the Lib Dems’ inconsistencies but, in achieving this important political result, we cannot give up our principles and confuse the freedom of the press with the absence of any responsibility.

Photo: Liberal Democrats