Row about David Cameron's endorsement of no campaign tactics in the referendum on the future of the voting system reached cabinet on Tuesday when Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, demanded to know if Cameron would disown the tactics.
However Mr Cameron refused to be drawn into a discussion and dismissed Mr Huhne’s behaviour as ‘inappropriate’ during an official government meeting. Sources described the moment as ‘a bit of a bust up.
Clegg isn’t, unlike Cable and Huhne, openly attacking the Tories. But he is doing so implicitly. This morning, for example, he declared that the Liberal Democrats were ‘the progressive party in this arrangement’. He also said that ‘real collective discipline’ was now no longer necessary — a license to his colleagues to keep sniping away at the Tories.
Both men replied that they were only responsible for the no campaign being run by the Conservative party. One source discounted claims that the chancellor countered that the issue was not appropriate for cabinet. They said the issue did not last that long. Tory sources were accused of leaking the row.
Browne said the party had moved "quite a long way backwards" towards the nasty party image during the AV campaign, and said such divisive action could leave the coalition looking "a bit different" after the referendum.
Earlier in day Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg admitted for the first time today he was ‘naïve’ to think the Alternative Vote referendum would not cause cracks in the Coalition government.
Some cabinet sources then claimed Huhne had not been supported by his Liberal Democrat colleagues in cabinet, but one senior Liberal Democrat said he merely said in private to their faces what he has been saying in the papers.
Cameron, for his part, concentrated his fire on John Humphrys’ questionable understanding of AV. When it came to the coalition, he was keen to suggest that it was business as usual in Whitehall: that what happens on the campaign trail, stays on the campaign trail. But Cameron’s boast that this remains a ‘cohesive and strong government’ does seem at odds with Clegg’s line that it is no longer imperative that there is ‘real collective discipline’ in the Cabinet.
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