I can sympathise with Morwen Millson in her disappointment at the Lib Dems nationally. Been there, done that, and got the t-shirt because I have at times been disappointed by some of the things my own party did in government, which seemed to be at odds with what ordinary members thought. It was almost impossible to find a local member in favour of Trident renewal or 42-day detention for example, and the introduction of student fees itself was extremely unpopular with the majority of members, so I can understand her being disappointed.

Reading beyond the headline though, it looks like she is not disappointed at all by the decision to increase tuition fees. She supports that, repeating the constant Con-Dem refrain that it is unavoidable. The only thing she appears to be disappointed by is the decision of her party’s candidates, presumably including the Horsham candidate, to make very public, personal pledges to vote against any increases.

All that has happened here is that Morwen Millson has managed to get a headline that looks like disapproval of the policy to increase fees over the top of a long justification of the increases.

Let us be very clear, the increase in tuition fees, just like the cuts to public services and attacks on the security of social housing tenants is only necessary if you make certain assumptions, like starting from the premise that the deficit and public borrowing must be reduced at a rate most economists would agree will endanger any chance of economic recovery. We have already seen that approach fail in Ireland, and the government’s reaction is to copy the strategy that has already been seen to fail so spectacularly.

The irony is that, after being told that we must reduce police numbers, cut back benefits at the very time they will be most needed, and hack away at council services in the cause of reducing borrowing, the government can increase borrowing by £7bn at the drop of a hat to bail out the Irish economy that they are so keen to emulate.

Another assumption made is that large companies like Vodafone, non-doms and people with millions lodged in Swiss banks should not have to pay all the tax that they are liable for. If you start from an assumption that tax avoidance and evasion should be eliminated you will find that these cuts are avoidable after all and that not only would tuition fee rises be avoidable but perhaps tuition fees themselves would be avoidable.

Whenever I hear that some idealogically-motivated attack on normal working people is ‘unavoidable’ I have to remind myself that is only because the government has chosen to make it unavoidable, and it appears that locally the Lib Dems are as disappointing as they are nationally because they are happy to support this, even if they want to simultaneously appear that they do not.

I really did expect better from the Lib Dems, but I imagine that my disappointment is nothing compared to that of anybody who actually voted for them, especially if their decision was made on the strength of the pledges on tuition fees.