Danny Alexander: ‘I want to be able to say I did the things I thought were right’

The Lib Dems’ rising star on why the budget cuts pain is necessary, why power-sharing with Labour never happened and why he won’t distance himself from Nick Clegg Danny Alexander was a cradle Liberal Democrat. “My grandfather was a Liberal councillor,” he tells me, “and when I was about three months old my mother says she caught him rocking me in my pram, saying: ‘Repeat after me, I am a member of the Liberal party.’” His grandfather, now 93, denies the tale, but it helps make sense of a life that seems to have been lived for politics. In his 20s, when most young men are exploring life’s pleasures, Alexander was campaigning for Britain to join the euro. He briefly did PR for the Cairngorms national park, but in 2005 won the Highlands constituency around Inverness for the Lib Dems, was catapulted into the cabinet when the coalition government came to power last year, and is now chief secretary to the Treasury, charged with overseeing £81bn of budget cuts. My interview with Alexander is unusual. It takes place immediately before and after dinner in the lounge of

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