Liberal Democrat Economic Policy

Larry Elliot has a reminder of the Liberal Democrats' previous record European economics. What this indicates to me is not so much a wrong analysis as a tendency to follow fashions whithout analysis. During the election, the Liberal Democrats were similarly following a fashion in arguing for a fiscal stimulus. In government, it suddenly became fashionable to go for austerity, although I would have thought the weakness of the Eurozone and the petering out of Obama's stimulus actually strengthened the argument the other way. One could go back further to when Nick Clegg was calling for "savage cuts" only to backtrack later on.