Nick Clegg and the Lib Dem leadership may be at ease with the small-state, free-market Tories, but many of their MPs and activists are losing patience. In this week’s cover story, Richard Grayson looks at the growing fault lines within the Lib Dems and asks if the party is destined to split.
Elsewhere, in the politics column, Mehdi Hasan says that the Lib Dems, renowned for their ruthless and negative local campaigning, have brought these dark arts into government. Meanwhile, David Blanchflower warns David Cameron that he will have to eat his words after claiming that unemployment will fall each year from now.
In international politics, John Pilger tells us what he discovered when he entered Obama’s Pentagon and Sigrid Rausing reports on the growing rift between the secular right and liberal human rights groups in the Middle East.
Also look out for my interview with Christopher Hitchens, in which the polemicist gives his verdict on David Cameron, discusses his campaign to arrest the Pope and explains why he’s no kind of conservative.
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