Nick Clegg’s strategy director on tuition fees and how coalition will end

There’s an interesting interview with Richard Reeves, Nick Clegg’s departing Director of Strategy, over in The Independent.

It unsurprisingly starts with tuition fees:

For Richard Reeves, the worst moment of two years at the heart of the Coalition came when he saw two teenage girls in the street near his Kent home, one playing a flute, the other a violin. “Raising money to pay tuition fees,” said their sign. They were from the private Sevenoaks School; a lot of passers-by gave them money…

Mr Reeves admits he once kicked himself in the shins because of his own role in the debacle. He regrets that the near-trebling of fees was not branded a “capped graduate tax” and that he did not fight harder against the Treasury to ensure it was. “It was stupid; I was a bloody idiot,” he now admits.

On the question of how the Coalition will be wound down in the run up to the May 2015 polling day, Reeves says:

There could be an “intermediate” phase before the 2015 election but suspects it will last for only two or three months before the election – and “probably not” from 2014 as some expect. Equally, Lib Dem ministers could stay in their posts until polling day, he adds.