Lord Adonis: Nick Clegg’s choices made him irrelevant

Lord Andrew Adonis, a member of the Labour team who negotiated with the Liberal Democrats over a possible pact in 2010 has given a scathing assessment of the Lib Dems’ performance in coalition.

He wrote in The Observer: “Clegg made a series of serious misjudgments which are costing the country (and his party) dear.

“He has given David Cameron a large majority in return for little more than the power to apply an occasional brake – a power he would have possessed more strongly had the Tories formed a minority government. For the Lib Dems, it has been an exercise in irrelevance.

“For the country, it has yielded years of austerity economics for which they never voted.”