Tax victory caps solid Clegg year

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By Ben Wright Political correspondent, BBC News

Nick Clegg won an internal tax battle but did the public take any notice?

Predictions of a bust-up at this year's Lib Dem party conference proved wide of the mark.

In September, Nick Clegg convinced party members at Bournemouth that the Lib Dems should cement their status as a tax cutting party.

The leadership's Make it Happen document pledging a further £20bn of spending cuts was approved, despite some doubts among the faithful about the party ditching its old identity.

A tax and spend platform had been on its way out for a number of years.

The party had already agreed on a 4 pence cut in the basic rate of income tax but Clegg went further, proposing policies that cut the overall burden of tax.

In his first nine months as leader - a job he'd won by a whisker - Mr Clegg accelerated changes to party policy, emphasising progressive tax cuts, a smaller state and civil liberties.

European rebellion

But one of his first challenges was to manoeuvre the Lib Dems through the Lisbon Treaty debate in the House of Commons.

In the spring Clegg told his troops to abstain on Tory demands for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Many of his MPs were furious and 13 ignored their leader, believing the party had promised a referendum on the Treaty.

Three front bench spokesmen stood down and Clegg was mocked by his political opponents.

It was Clegg's first awkward moment. But not his last.

An interview for May's GQ magazine was still causing guffaws of laughter in the Commons at the end of the year.

Nick Clegg's admission to Piers Morgan that he had slept with "no more than 30" women earned him the nickname Clegg-over.

It stuck. As did a reputation for bluff, camera-friendly straight-talking.

A third of the electorate don't have an opinion of Nick Clegg Peter Kellner, YouGov <a class="" href="/1/hi/uk_politics/7803603.stm">Clegg warns of 'difficult' 2009</a>

But he looked out of touch in September when he told an interviewer that the weekly pension was "about £30 quid".

His off-camera candour caught him out too.

In November he was overheard on a flight to Inverness slating several members of his own shadow cabinet team as "useless" and "not equipped" for top jobs.

Clegg certainly couldn't claim to have transformed his party's standing at the polls. May's local elections results were solid, although the party received its lowest share of the national vote for ten years.

And the Lib Dems have stopped stealing the show in by-elections.

In Glenrothes their vote collapsed, they were squeezed at Crewe and the Tories brushed them off in Henley.

According to Peter Kellner, the president of polling organisation YouGov, the party's ratings are only marginally higher than they were under under previous leader Sir Menzies Campbell.

And the numbers on Nick Clegg's personal appeal aren't much better.

"A third of the electorate don't have an opinion of Nick Clegg," says Mr Kellner.

"He's simply not made much of an impact for good or ill on great number of voters."

Cable impact

Unlike the sage of the credit crunch, Treasury spokesman Vince Cable, who was everywhere in 2008.

When it came to forecasting the gloom, the Liberal Democrats were ahead of the rest.

Cable's incisive, witty often withering economic erudition was one of the sounds of the crisis. Vince Cable cemented his reputation as a man worth listening to

He could have eclipsed Nick Clegg but the Lib Dem leader kept him close, praising Mr Cable at the conference as a "twinkle-toed economic prophet".

But the economic crisis has robbed the Lib Dems of their short-lived status as the only tax-cutting party in British politics, with Labour and the Tories both now talk the tax-cutting talk.

And staying distinctive remains a challenge for the Lib Dems, particularly without issues such as Iraq and top-up fees - currently under review - to mark them out from the crowd.

But with the polls very tight, Clegg may find himself kingmaker at the next election if there is a hung parliament.

And Peter Kellner thinks that needs clarity now from the Lib Dem leader.

He wants to know who they would back and what would be their terms if no party gets an outright majority?

For the first time in years it's a real possibility.

The Lib Dems hate that question but it's preferable to whispers and speculation about the party's leadership which, after Clegg's solid year in charge, have gone away.