David Maddox: Clegg and Alexander have taken the Lib Dems even further away from their ideological roots

For Lib Dem members suckled on the dream of political reform and opposing cuts wherever they came from, the Orwellian image must be similar to the one they have when they see their leaders sitting around the Cabinet table with their Tory partners.

Government has been a tough experience for the Lib Dems. But yesterday might be one of those days which symbolises how far the party’s leadership has come from the idealists of perpetual opposition to the hardened realists of government.

It began with a headline indicating that the Lib Dem Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, has told his party that “he won’t go to war” with the Tories over House of Lords reform.

The day then continued when his leading henchman, Chief Treasury Secretary Danny Alexander, in effect announcing another austerity cut of £16 billion, 5 per cent savings for each department, although in time-honoured fashion the Treasury insisted that they were not cuts.

These two men have just helped engineer a Budget where the richest 1 per cent got an income tax cut of 5 per cent while the new granny tax grabbed £3.5bn off pensioners, although admittedly the threshold of income tax for ordinary working people was raised.

A retreat on the Lords, a 100-year dream of Liberals that it should be democratised, would be hard to stomach.

It is the party of constitutional reform, if nothing else, and the failure to end first-past-the-post after the humiliating AV referendum defeat still rankles.

But Mr Clegg has been engaged in a game of chicken with Tory backbenchers who are vehemently opposed to Lords reform, and somehow believe that the Lib Dems have been far too influential in the coalition.

It seems the Deputy Prime Minister has jumped first on the basis that some of the Tory backbenchers do seem to be willing to bring the coalition down over the issue, even though there is a reference to Lords reform in the coalition agreement.

It does not mean the issue is dead, as yesterday’s report by the joint committee on the draft House of Lords reform bill showed. But with Mr Clegg showing that he is not going to press the destruct button on the government over the issue, Tory backbenchers believe they can block it again.

It will leave Lib Dems with little to point at in terms of social or political reform from five years of government. Their hopes may now be pinned on bringing in gay marriage, but this will not balance out the perceived betrayal over student tuition fees,

Meanwhile, Mr Alexander is getting on with the Tories’ business of reducing the size of the state by pushing through more cuts.