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Lib Dem grandee and close Nick Clegg ally calls PM ‘grave disappointment’ and says no campaign has told ‘regiment of lies’ Lord Ashdown, one of Nick Clegg’s closest allies, accused David Cameron of a breach of faith, describing his refusal to dissociate himself from a “regiment of lies” poured out by the no-to-AV campaign as setting him apart from every British prime minister of the postwar period. The former Liberal Democrat leader also predicted that Cameron’s behaviour would have long-term consequences for the coalition, including the terms on which it eventually ends. He told the Guardian: “So far the coalition has been lubricrated by a large element of goodwill and trust. It is not any longer. The consequence is that when it comes to the bonhomie of the Downing Street rose garden, that has gone. It will never again be glad confident morning.” The ferocity of his attack, made after consultations within the party, follows what looks like certain defeat in the referendum on the alternative vote due to be announced on Friday. The party also faces severe losses in the English council elections as results emerge. Senior figures in the yes campaign were predicting a 60%-to-40% defeat on a desultory turnout, with one admitting: “We were providing a solution to a problem the British public did not recognise.” Another said: “Once David Cameron moved in the way he did, the polls moved. It was unstoppable.” Ashdown is furious with the no campaign for personalised attacks on Clegg that accused him of broken promises on tuition fees and spending cuts, and arguments that AV was a “Lib Dem fix”. Ashdown, who led the party for 11 years until 1999, said: “The bottom line is that Liberal Democrats are exceedingly angry. We believe there has been a breach of faith here. If the Conservative party funds to the level of 99% a campaign whose central theme is to denigrate and destroy our leader, there are consequences for that. “What that means is that this is a relationship that is much less about congeniality, it becomes a business relationship, a transactional relationship, and maybe it will be all the better for that.” He went on: “David Cameron is the prime minister. He sets the tone of politics in this country. It is an unhappy fact that when he was asked to dissociate himself from a campaign that was run on the basis of personalisation and personal attacks, and messages that were far more than some subtle bending of the truth, he refused to do that. “I have to say that he did not dissociate himself from a campaign whose nature I believe every previous British prime minister in my time would have disassociated himself from. That is a grave disappointment. “This is a triumph for the regiment of lies. We live with pretty strenuous political campaigns in Britain, but these were downright lies.” Ashdown also accused Cameron of panicking after demands from his backbenchers to step up the referendum campaign. “In backtracking, to use no stronger a word than that, on what was a private agreement he had with Nick Clegg about the way this campaign was conducted, I think the prime minister panicked in the face of his rightwingers. I regret that.” Ashdown said it would be right if his party now highlighted its differences within the coalition. He insisted the Lib Dems would not leave the coalition until the end of the five-year parliament, saying: “We have set our hands to this task and now it must be completed so the purpose of the coalition has not altered, but the mood music, the atmosphere of the coalition most assuredly has as a result of what has gone on in the past three weeks. I think we should be much more straightforward where we disagree. That is not a criticism of Clegg. “I have always said when asked I did not think the result of the referendum could affect the coalition, but I did think the way it was fought could.” He seemed to imply that the party’s willingness to enter another coalition with Cameron may be affected. “I am very clear that the nature of this coalition and the way that it ends, the mood between the two parties when it ends and therefore what happens afterwards, may well be affected by this.” But he urged his party to hold its nerve, and to realise that popularity will take a long time to recover. “We are in there for the long haul, I recall how long it took us as a party to recover after 1991. It is not this year, next year or the year therafter. It is about being strong enough when the dividend comes.” He urged his battered colleagues to keep their nerve. “I am someone who has presided over a party represented by an asterisk denoting that there is no perceptible support for the party in the country, so I am used to setbacks and difficult days as this looks as though these will be. “Anyone that went into this coalition believing that there would be a benefit to the party particularly in the short term was living in cloud-cuckoo-land. We knew perfectly there was a price to be paid for this and it was going to be paid in the short term. “The dividend to be delivered in this will come after three or four years when the government has taken the country through an economic crisis.” He indicated that the Lib Dems’ fortunes were now inextricably bound up with the fate of the economy over the next four years. “The central proposition of this parliament stands: ‘Is George Osborne’s economic judgment right?’ I believe it is. The whole of British politics now rests on that single proposition. The fortunes of the coalition, the fortunes of the two parties in the coalition and the fortunes of the Labour party rest on that.” There is no sign that any senior Lib Dem cabinet member yet wants to revisit the deficit reduction plan. Ashdown challenged Cameron to show that he was the reformer he had claimed to be, by pressing ahead with an elected House of Lords. “It is in the Tory manifesto. Is he going to deliver or not? Let’s see the prime minister’s determination.” He also lashed out at Labour’s failure to back reform, saying: “Yet again Labour has proved it cannot be trusted with reform. Labour claims to be a great radical reforming party but whenever it comes to a key issue of reform, we find Labour defending the status quo.” Clegg and Cameron will try to show it is business as usual when they publish a checklist of coalition achievements before next week’s anniversary. There will be a symbolic joint foreword by the two men. There will also be some action on youth unemployment next week. Meanwhile Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, waiting anxiously for news of the scale of the Labour advance in his first nationwide electoral test, will urge the electorate not to be duped by the promise of a coalition mark 2, predicting sham concessions by the Conservatives. AV referendum Alternative vote Paddy Ashdown David Cameron Nick Clegg Liberal Democrats Conservatives Labour Electoral reform Liberal-Conservative coalition Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk