No Pact, No Deal, No Loss

Tory relief as Hughes promises not to cling

The deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, Simon Hughes, has reassured his party's owners that the millions of negative votes gained by the Lib Dems through complicity in the final destruction of the welfare state will not be allowed to hamper a Conservative victory at the next election.

Yaps of joyous relief and cascades of best quality vomit surged from Conservative Central Office as Hughes said that the Liberal Democrats would not impose any deal or pact on their coalition partners that would allow the collapse in the Lib Dem vote to cramp the Conservatives' style.

The Liberal Democrats formed a five-year coalition with the Conservatives "because the electorate gave no party a majority", Hughes said.

Since the electorate failed to vote definitively for the über-Thatcherite assault on the public sector which was promised by all three main parties, the Liberal Democrats were obliged to connive at driving the economy into a double-dip recession so that people would feel better about the Alternative Vote system.

"We should have no preference at the next election between the Tories and Labour and other parties," he said. "We are going to stand on our own."

The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, had earlier urged the public not to judge the coalition on the gleeful vandalism of its first hundred days when the next five years would do much more to ensure the peace, prosperity and security of boardroom executives and hereditary millionaires.