The cartoonists are not being kind to the Liberal Democrats. Chris Riddell, the brilliant colleague with whom I share this page, depicts a hapless and deluded Nick Clegg consigned to a broom cupboard. Sticks and stones can break their bones – but names can surely never hurt them? I wouldn't be so certain. The images drawn by cartoonists, the metaphors deployed by commentators and the comparisons made by opponents shape how the public view their politicians. Even more importantly, they influence how politicians feel about themselves. They can take being disliked, they can even handle being hated. What they find unendurable is being cast as pathetic.
When David Steel and David Owen were partnered in the SDP/Liberal Alliance during the Eighties, Spitting Image put a tiny, squeaky Steel puppet living in the handkerchief pocket of a giant, gravelly Owen. The Liberal leader subsequently broke the rule that politicians never admit that they bleed when pricked. He confessed that he loathed it. He felt his authority in his party was undermined and his reputation with the voters was diminished. Eventually, he moved to ruthlessly assert himself over the other David. He did so, at least in part, because he was smarting from the humiliation inflicted by a satirical puppet.
In the early, sunny days of the coalition, it was universally described as a romance. When they plighted their troth in the back garden of Number 10, Dave and Nick were portrayed as the happy grooms at a gay wedding. That pleased the Lib Dems. They liked the idea that it was a marriage because it promoted their man as an equal of the prime minister and the two parties as joint owners of the enterprise. The Tory leader still makes joking references to the Lib Dem as "my civil partner", but cartoonists and commentators have moved on to much less flattering metaphors. Nick is depicted as Dave's school fag, his nodding dog and his dumb waiter. Mr Clegg will say this doesn't bother him. But I bet it hurts. And even if his skin is sufficiently thick that he genuinely doesn't care, his party will mind a lot. To see their leader repeatedly cast as a fig leaf or a fallguy will feed the anxiety wriggling in the guts of every Lib Dem about what they have signed up to with the Tories.
The Budget brought this into harsh focus. The ferocity of the spending cuts and the steepness of the tax rises invited a huge backlash from the media and public. I find quiet surprise and relief in Number 10 and the Treasury that the media has not been more hostile and the voters have not howled with rage. George Osborne delivered the Budget flanked by not one, but two Lib Dems: his deputy, Danny Alexander, and Mr Clegg. By the time the chancellor finished, the dispatch box was littered with broken election promises made by both parties. David Cameron had pledged that first year cuts under a Conservative government would not be "swingeing". He did not tell us that this was because they would be draconian. The Conservatives reassured the public that they had "absolutely no plans to put up VAT". The sales tax is going up to 20%. The downward switch in the inflation measure used to uprate welfare benefits was nowhere advertised during the election campaign.
Yet the Conservatives have had a fairly easy ride over the reaction to the Budget. This is partly, I suppose, because both the media and the voters assumed all the parties were lying during the election campaign and intuited that it would be sensible to expect the Tories to do many things which they were pretending they would not. The right-wing newspapers have saluted the chancellor for taking the corrective measures, as the Tory press sees it, necessary after the Labour years. The centre and leftish press have tended to be more interested in and critical of the Lib Dems. It is they who have felt the greatest concentration of heat.
One reason is because their position is the more exposed. During the campaign, Nick Clegg unveiled a "Tory VAT bombshell" poster, predicting and condemning the very VAT increase that his party is now supporting. Vince Cable denounced as "economic masochism" the very spending squeeze now being introduced by the coalition. They had made particular promises that fiscal retrenchment would be implemented in a way which was consistent with social justice. The Budget was duly projected as "progressive". That presentation is beginning to unravel under closer scrutiny of its distributional impact.
The deputy prime minister and business secretary cannot claim ignorance, which would anyway make them look pathetic. David Cameron and George Osborne were extremely careful to ensure that the Lib Dems felt they were fully included in the decision-making before the Budget. Nick Clegg was certainly given far more advanced information and consultation about the contents of this Budget than Tony Blair usually received when his chancellor was Gordon Brown.
David Cameron is conscious that it is not good for Nick Clegg to be seen as the human shield for Tory cuts. George Osborne is also sensitive to the pressure on their coalition partner. At a meeting of the Tory backbench 1922 committee, the chancellor urged his colleagues to be supportive of Lib Dem counterparts. "We were told to show them love," reports one Conservative MP. The prime minister has been happy for it to be suggested that elements of the Budget were more progressive because of Lib Dem involvement. Note, though, that the Lib Dem proposals that were in the Budget were ones that the Tory leadership liked anyway. During one of the leaders' election debates, David Cameron called it "a beautiful idea" to raise the income tax-free allowance. Increasing the rate of capital gains tax had the commendation of Nigel Lawson, a former Tory chancellor much admired by George Osborne.
Since the Budget, Number 10 has been trying to bolster Nick Clegg by briefing that the deputy prime minister will play a key role on the international stage by taking the lead on relations with China and representing Britain at a UN summit in September. That effort was rather under-cut when Mr Cameron told journalists that Mr Clegg would not take formal charge of the government when the prime minister is on his summer holidays. Modern communications may indeed make that a bit meaningless, but even John Prescott was permitted to indulge himself in the illusion that he was in charge when Tony Blair was away.
Civil servants say they do not yet detect any "buyers' remorse" among the Lib Dems in the government. They are very jittery about the effects of the Budget, both on sections of society that they say they care about and their own political prospects. Simon Hughes, the party's new deputy leader, caused a flurry by warning the Conservatives not to try to break deals laid out in the coalition agreement and made a suggestion that Lib Dem MPs might even try to amend the Budget.But Mr Clegg's party broadly accepts his contention that making painful and unpopular choices now is the necessary price for succeeding in the long-game of proving to the country that Lib Dems are up to shouldering the responsibilities of office. That is why they were prepared to swallow their forebodings about the Tories in the first place. MPs and party members voted by overwhelming majorities to support entry into the coalition. That was just seven weeks ago. .
For the moment, the rumbles among Lib Dem MPs about the Budget are only that: rumbles rather than a full-scale revolt. If the government collapses, then they understand that they can say goodbye to the Lib Dems looking like credible wielders of power and give up on the voters supporting changes to the electoral system that would make coalition government more likely in future.
Labour is hammering away at the stress fractures in the coalition. In her response to the Budget, Harriet Harman was ritualistic in her denunciation of "Tory cuts". It was against the Lib Dems that she ejected most of the contents of her venom gland when she accused them of prostituting their principles to secure ministerial positions at the expense of "tens of thousands" of other people's jobs. She jeered at Vince Cable: "He's gone from national treasure to Treasury poodle."
Every time someone says something like that, I see the Lib Dem leadership wince. As the squeeze begins, they will be roughed up by interviewers, raged at by studio audiences, and assailed by cries of betrayal from erstwhile supporters and voters. That Nick Clegg and his senior colleagues can probably endure. It's the badge of being in power.
What will wound his sense of himself and erode his position with his party is being seen as the neutered subordinate of the Tories. There will be a voice in every Lib Dem ear whispering: "We're being used, we're being used, and everyone can see it." It doesn't even have to be all that true to start hurting. This worm of unease is already niggling in their guts. If it grows, it could gnaw away at the foundations of this coalition until it comes tumbling down.
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The Pope expressed hope justice would take its course in Belgium 
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