Cabinet feud turns sweary: is the Coalition falling apart?

Coalition relations have reached “a new low point” following Theresa May’s speech on Tuesday, according to Nick Clegg. It seems that, for once, Clegg might have judged things correctly: a Home Office source has reacted to the comments by branding the Deputy Prime Minister “a wanker”.

On his LBC call-in radio show this morning Clegg said that May’s speech to Tory Party Conference this week “was one of the most misleading and outrageous platform speeches I’ve heard in conference season for a very long period of time.”

He added: “Really this a new low point in Coalition relations, her suggestion that the fact that the Liberal Democrats had said no to the Snoopers’ Charter – which you’ll remember was the proposal from Theresa May that the state should be able to store every website you ever visit over a year – was putting children at risk.”

“When of course the facts turned out to be the case – quite, quite different – that the reason the National Crime Agency (NCA) had to drop some of these cases was because IP addresses were not properly matched to individual mobile devices.

“If we go back to your archives you will discover that I have been saying for months that that is a problem we should deal with and guess who has been dragging their feet to do something about it? The Home Office.

“So I think I am entitled to feel a little bit aggrieved to hear a Conservative Home Secretary somehow claim that my party is putting children at risk when it’s their inactivity which is doing just that.”

“I have made it very, very clear to her that I expect an apology from her for making such a false and outrageous claim.”

The Home Office’s reaction was, however, a little more succint:

https://twitter.com/jameschappers/status/517617130469359617

While there must surely be some genuine sentiment expressed here by both sides, a manufactured feud between Clegg and May would do wonders for the popularity of both with their grassroots members in the middle of party conference season.