Mark Pack

Lembit Opik is interested in becoming Mayor of London, while The Guardian has a round-up of comments from backbenchers about the Budget. Although all are anxious about one aspect or another, notably they all overall support is as with Annette Brooke:

I don’t like the budget but I dislike the economic situation we find ourselves in even more. The Lib Dems have done their utmost to address the fairness issue. In an ideal word I would not choose to put up VAT. But I was convinced, even at the hustings meeting, that the books were much worse than we thought and that whether we had a Tory or a Labour government, VAT was going to go up.

Meanwhile, there’s also speculation about quite what coalition may mean for party conferences. It’s already been the case that MPs from one party sometimes pop up at fringe meetings from the other and we’re likely to see a lot more of that in the autumn. The Independent has also speculated that Cameron and Clegg may address each other party’s conference. From what senior Lib Dems are saying, I’ll happily wager a very large chocolate bar on Cameron not addressing the Liberal Democrat conference in Liverpool.

UPDATE: Chocolate is looking good for Federal Conference Committee’s Jeremy Hargreaves tweets, “Lib Dem conf cttee has decided not to invite Cameron to speak at Conference.”