I think tuition fees cost us the AV referendum. It’s not the only reason we lost and we could have won despite it but tuition fees made the whole thing very difficult right from the start. So hard that an amateur campaign had no reply to the more cynical campaign against Reform.

It gutted the Lib Dem activist core. It made certain that Liberal Democrat elected officials and activists would be fighting for their own survival. It associated Reform with the deeply tarnished brand of the Liberal Democrats. It showed up coalition politics in a bad light and it made it impossible for Nick Clegg to campaign for a Yes vote.

How could we campaign on a platform of making politician behave better when the whole idea was seen as a reward for a man who had broken the biggest political promise since Munich.

I had people say to me, you only want this so you can get into coalition and break more promises.