Clegg doesn't rule out working with Brown

Nick Clegg was first out of the blocks this morning with the Prime spot interview on the Today programme.

The Lib Dem leader said his parties proposals to halve the deficit went much further than Labour’s or the Conservatives’and reiterated his view that in a hung parliament the party with the biggest mandate had the “moral right to seek to govern first though not ruling out a deal with Gordon Brown .

Reaction though has not been good.The Spectator's David Blackburn believes he blew a golden opportunity

Nick Clegg won’t get many opportunities to sell himself to voters and he has just been demolished on the Today programme. All things to all men, Clegg was all over the place. He couldn't give an exact answer when questioned about the size of the deficit, and the Lib Dems’ shifting position on the depth of cuts was exposed once again, recalling his autumn wobble on ‘savage cuts’. He also refused to rule out a VAT rise. Similarly, he could not expand on his plans for parliamentary reform beyond labels such as ‘radicalism’, ‘renewal’ and ‘the old politics’.