FROM now on, for Liberal Democrats read the Coalition Party.

One senior party source insisted the voters were getting used to the idea of coalition government at Westminster.

The source suggested that while hitherto there had not been a realistic Coalition Party option on the ballot paper there now would be - the LibDems.

This was the key pitch of Nick Clegg, who claimed the economic recovery would not have happened without his party.

He suggested this was because the LibDems had been brave enough to put aside their reservations and had entered into partnership with the Tories to save Britain, then insisted it could not be completed in a fair way without his party being in a second coalition - with whoever.

Much of the conference was about the leadership seeking to reassure the party faithful that getting into bed with the Tories had not meant the LibDems had lost their soul.

They were not, Mr Clegg insisted yesterday, "just some subset of the Labour or Tory parties; we're no-one's little brother. We have our own values, our own liberal beliefs".

This idea that the LibDems had simply become an "echo chamber" of the dreaded Conservatives was most evident during the economic debate.

The rebels sought to redefine the "fiscal mandate" away from spending cuts towards higher taxes and more public spending. While the leadership successfully saw off this challenge, it only narrowly stopped another - a bid to reinstate the 50p income tax rate - by four votes.

Vince Cable incurred the wrath of his colleagues by not only failing to disabuse people that he had sympathy for the rebel amendments in the economic debate but also by launching a withering attack on the "ugly" and "callous" Tories and by suggesting the Coalition could end before its full term of 2015. Several irate senior figures made clear the Business Secretary had diminished himself.

The leak of how the leadership was considering a tax hike for those on £50,000 a year, later retracted and branded a gaffe, reminded us of the amateur approach of past LibDem conferences. Any such idea would guarantee Mr Clegg and his colleagues would lose Middle Britain and a swathe of seats.

The leadership's key announcement on free school meals for all five to seven-year-olds in England at a cost of £600 million a year was meant to show how LibDem values were different from the Tories, who will announce a similar amount for a marriage tax break at their conference later this month.

The aim of the free lunch announcement was to dull the Labour charge on the cost of living crisis, showing LibDems cared for all families with small children, helping them to the tune of £400 a year for each child.

Of course, the independence theme pervaded conference, with the collective pro-Union insistence a Scotland outwith Britain would be a poorer, diminished nation and that within it both Scotland and the UK would be richer and stronger to face the challenges ahead.

Yet if by the time the LibDems return to Glasgow next October Scotland has voted yes, then the political kaleidoscope will have been shaken and no-one will quite know for sure where the pieces will settle.