Coalition deal caused offence, Clegg admits

In an interview ahead of Sunday's special Lib Dem conference to discuss the coalition, Mr Clegg told The Guardian that a Labour/Lib Dem alliance would have been "unworkable" and seen by voters as "illegitimate".

Meanwhile Business Secretary Vince Cable made clear his determination to take action to break up the banks and clamp down on excessive bonuses.

And Home Secretary Theresa May said she would take measures to ensure law-abiding citizens felt more confident about intervening to deal with anti-social behaviour.

Mr Clegg acknowledged that the coalition deal "caused both surprise and with it some offence" within his party.

"There are those on both the left and right who are united in thinking this should not have happened," he said.

"But the truth is this: there was no other responsible way to play the hand dealt to the political parties by the British people at the election.

"The parliamentary arithmetic made a Lib-Lab coalition unworkable and it would have been regarded as illegitimate by the British people. Equally, a minority administration would have been too fragile to tackle the political and economic challenges ahead."

Mr Clegg said that since joining Tories in Government, he had found a "core set of common assumptions and aspirations" which the parties shared.

Mr Cable told The Guardian that he and Chancellor George Osborne were united in its determination to break up banks and stop "vast" and "unacceptable" bonuses.

"The underlying assumption is that there will have to be restructuring in the banking system in order to make the system safe," Mr Cable said.

"Vast bonuses, particularly where it involves cash payments, are just not acceptable and that will be stopped by the new government and properly regulated in the interests of reducing risk."

Conservative Mrs May, who is the second female Home Secretary in British history, told the Daily Telegraph she wanted to create an atmosphere in which people felt able to stop gangs of youths causing a disturbance in their neighbourhood.

And she said that one of the Government's priorities was legislation to protect householders who tackled burglars and people who took on troublemakers in the street.

She said she wanted to get more police on the beat by cutting paperwork, but was unable to rule out a cut in numbers of police as the Government tries to balance Britain's books.

"We need to generate an environment in which people are able to have the confidence to intervene," she said. "The more we are able to generate that confidence, the more people will feel confident about intervening with kids on the street corner."

Mrs May said that her success in the post should be judged on whether "people feel safer in their own homes" and public faith in the police is restored.

There were signs of discontent about the coalition deal among the Liberal Democrat grassroots today.

Nich Starling, a councillor in Broadland and writer of the Norfolk Blogger blog, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "It makes some of us feel like we have been turned into liars and fools. Only 10 days ago we were out delivering leaflets telling people how dreadful the Tories would be and how you can't trust them with the NHS and Nick Clegg told us they weren't progressive and we were told not to elect them because of a threatened VAT bombshell - and 10 days later we are helping them to do all those things.

"Some of our very good frontbench spokesmen don't seem to be involved at all. It seems David Cameron has been able to pick and choose who he wants and Nick Clegg has dropped people without any reference to how good a job they have done, particularly some of the people who did a very good job of opposing the Tories, like Simon Hughes and Norman Lamb."

Mr Starling added: "It's easy to compromise on your principles if you don't have any. Some of the things which we are going to be introducing appear to me to be very unprincipled, given we were opposing them just 10 days ago."

And former Lib Dem activist Mark Rowe, from Redcar, said he had left the party in protest at the coalition: "The Liberal traditions and values of freedom and liberalism made us unique and were worth standing by. It appears that we might well have been consumed and have very little say."

But Mr Hughes, a former Lib Dem president who missed out on a ministerial job in the coalition government, defended the deal with the Tories.

Mr Hughes told Today: "Though brave and risky, this is both the best way forward for liberal democracy to be seen to be advancing its policies through government and for the country.

"Our party remains an independent party. We will take views. We don't suddenly change our policy."

Liberal Democrats had not signed up to a rise in VAT and continued to oppose nuclear power, he said.

And he said that the emergency budget due to be produced in June would be "a budget of the two parties" drawn up as a result of consultation in Cabinet.

"The way we are going to continue to deliver liberal democracy is not just by things we have achieved in the agreement - and there are many: a freedom bill, scrapping ID cards, fixed term parliaments, lifting the poor out of poverty, restoring the pension link to earnings immediately - but also by keeping up the strongest liberal presence, arguing in the party and the country.

"If we do that we can have the most persuasive influence in government."

Mr Hughes acknowledged that he and new Business Secretary Vince Cable "come from the left and centre-left of the party and of politics, so it is entirely counter-intuitive that we should end up going into government with the Tories".

But he added: "Vince Cable is as strong and determined as the rest of us to make sure we don't give in to the Tories on budgetary matters and tax matters.

"I am confident that Vince Cable and Nick Clegg and the others in government will make sure that on being tough with the City and regulation, making sure we have fairer taxes, pensioners get a fair deal and helping the disadvantaged, we will be heard and we will make sure we deliver.

"That's the test. I urge people to stay with us and judge us by what we do, not by suspicions and fears at the beginning of a difficult and of course risky journey."

Conservative backbencher Christopher Chope warned that the Lib Dems had set "a very sophisticated honey trap" by striking a deal for a five-year Parliament which can only be brought down by a 55% majority in a vote of no confidence.

Writing on website conservativehome.com, Mr Chope said: "Under the coalition agreement, the Conservatives will be unable to call a General Election even if the Lib Dems withdraw from that coalition.

"This means the Lib Dems remain free, at any time, to pull the rug from under the Conservatives, join with Labour and the Nationalists in a minority Government and force through full PR (proportional representation) and a wider socialist agenda.

"Therefore, the consequence of the 55% threshold requirement to secure a dissolution is to facilitate the very nightmare scenario of full PR which Conservative MPs were told they were avoiding by agreeing to support the AV (alternative vote) referendum."