He will also detail what that would buy in education spending – for example in equipment

He will also detail what that would buy in education spending – for example, in equipment and books for primary schools.He will also attack what he sees as a creeping “moral authoritarianism”. Explicitly, this is directed at the Tories and Michael Howard. But, thanks to Jack Straw’s hawkish attitudes on law and order, it is an area where Ashdown can also differentiate himself from Blair. It isn’t clear that being bolder on income tax or more liberal on crime than Blair is exactly helping to lift his party’s popularity, still trailing below its pre-1992 election levels.

(In an interview in yesterday’s New Statesman, Ashdown refers ruefully to a remark by the US Democratic Presidential hopeful Adlai Stevenson. When told by a supporter that all good men will vote for him, Stevenson replied “That isn’t going to be enough.”)He is also paying a price, in terms of his relations with Labour, for what its senior figures continue to complain are carping public criticisms on policy from spokesmen below the level of the two Liberal Democrat politicians Blair most admires – Ashdown himself and Menzies Campbell. This is so much the case that in the increasingly byzantine contingency planning for a TV debate between the party leaders, Labour are not going out of their way to fight Ashdown’s corner in seeking equal air time. So there are limits to co-operation, but that may be worth it to preserve the distinctive identity which Ashdown needs to fight a national campaign.But is this for always? Ashdown has managed to maintain a separate brand image – poll ratings may not be spectacular but the fact that its vote in the Wirral wasn’t squeezed below four percent confirms that its support isn’t going to implode The real identity crisis is much longer term. The party’s elder statesman, Lord Jenkins, was misreported as having called for a merger in a speech last Saturday. He did no such thing, and even if he had, every senior Lib Dem has ruled out the idea.What’s more, Ashdown is entitled first to say that Blair’s politics remain an unfinished canvas – with the Labour leader both reassuring voters that he is safe and allies that he will be more radical than they think – and second that there is a ideological distinction between the social democratic roots of New Labour and the Liberal traditions of his own party.

(Even though his party contains quite a lot of erstwhile social democrats whom Labour would like to hoover up if they could).Suppose Labour gets a landslide. Ashdown said yesterday his party would sit happily on the opposition benches. But to what end? Suppose also that Blair’s law and order policy, perhaps even his Home Secretary, is not quite as authoritarian as the electoral imperative now dictates it is. Suppose that savings elsewhere result in increased education spending at a level to dwarf anything which Ashdown is offering.