Ashdown’s decision to end the formal neutrality between the two parties and promise not to sustain a Tory government was in its own terms as bold as Blair’s to replace Clause IV. But to encourage the process by launching a national crusade in its favour risks reducing the party’s overall share of the vote – and with it the most potent demonstration of the unfairness of the first-past-the-post system.These contradictions should not be misunderstood. What’s more, every twitch of the electoral beast since 1992 suggests an increasing willingness to be tactical. The campaign in Liberal Democrat target seats consists in persuading increasingly sophisticated Labour supporters that their only chance of unseating the Tory is to vote Liberal Democrat.Unable yet to reform the electoral system, the party is seeking to beat it. A recent study of neighbouring wards in Basildon – admittedly at the peak of the Tories’ unpopularity – suggest that across quite a wide area voters uniformly backed the Liberal Democrats or Labour simply according to which candidate was the likelier to win. But equally, few senior politicians in either party will rule out in private the prospect that as a bulwark against his own left wing, Tony Blair will invite Ashdown, Menzies Campbell, and perhaps a couple of others to join the Cabinet as part of a comprehensive deal even if he has a majority of – say – around 25.

Carlisle is saying in public what many senior Lib Dems, Ashdown included, have contemplated in private.But Ashdown can’t quite put it that way today, any more than he can elevate into a national principle the technique his increasingly effective party machine is applying in around 50 target seats – almost all of them Tory held.The local election results in 1995 and 1996 suggest a remarkable increase in tactical voting – or intelligent voting, to use Ashdown’s own preferred term. But that isn’t so surprising since the sub-text of Alex Carlile’s remarks is that the offer might arise even in conditions where Tony Blair, busily reasserting his Liberal antecedents, is not merely forced into coalition by a hung Parliament.There is nobody who underestimates the difficulties – not least the need first for Blair to commit himself to electoral reform, second to sell it to a party who haven’t waited 17 years to win power and then voluntarily share it with another party. On Sunday Alex Carlile suggested that the Liberal Democrats and Labour were moving closer together and that if offered seats in a Blair Cabinet his party should take them – a conclusion handsomely endorsed in the poll we reported yesterday.Swiftly the party response comes back: Alex is a great chap but of course he’s standing down A bit demob-happy, you know. But until he, no less than Tony Blair, is prepared to say what he has in mind, his state shrinking agenda sits a little uneasily with the programme on which he intends to fight the election.Much more fundamental, however, is the party leader’s reticence about the consuming question of power and how to get it. Ashdown will make quite a lot today of the desirability of inter-party consensus to get through a programme of wholesale welfare reform. Most of it – including its anti-pollution measures – is fiscally neutral. But because of the pounds 2bn extra to be spent on education, it involves as a whole a modest increase in public spending Nothing wrong with that.

Yet at the weekend, in a tentative rightward tilt of the helm, Ashdown said that he wanted to bring public expenditure down to under 40 per cent of national income. There is also quite a lot Ashdown will not be saying this afternoon.There is, first, a minor quibble about the economic programme launched yesterday. By continuing to emphasise the menacing levels of public debt, as their economic spokesman Malcolm Bruce did yesterday, the Liberal Democrats will rightly be a continual irritant to their rivals, underlining the fragility of their relentless commitment to cut taxes rather than raise them.You don’t have to agree with each individual policy to be profoundly grateful that someone is prepared to break the conspiracy of silence on much of what will matter most after polling day But we shouldn’t get carried away either. It isn’t merely that he is prepared to contemplate a one penny in the pound increase in income tax to fund an extra pounds 2bn on education. He has the distinction of being the only party leader prepared to declare his hand on monetary union, the issue that will dominate the first half of the next Parliament.
The Liberal Democrats alone have been bold and long-termist enough to grapple with the environment – which will revive as an issue – and propose the levying of carbon taxes to pay for a job-stimulating reduction in employers’ national insurance contributions.On economic policy, Ashdown is the cuckoo in the nest, unique and not just in Britain, in being brave enough to challenge the assumption that no Anglo-Saxon electorate will vote for higher taxes. This is an ambitious claim but by no means a baseless one. In his leadership speech in Brighton this afternoon, Ashdown will stake a claim to be the one party leader prepared to elevate the coming electoral debate above the timid evasions of the two big parties.

Enter today Honest Paddy, the Politician who Tells the Truth. I just wanted to know if there is a technical name for the process of seating dinner guests alternately male and female all round a dinner table?Dr Wordsmith writes: I am not sure, but I don’t think so.Is there some aspect of vocabulary that leaves YOU bothered and bewildered? Just drop a line to Dr Wordsmith!. This speaker, who is always referred to as the special guest even though he is being paid to be there, is usually introduced by another speaker who knows nothing about the guest except what he has gleaned from `Who’s Who’.In addition, this “introducer”, as I suppose we must call him, is in turn introduced by someone else before him who gets up and says,”I now call upon Mr Joe Grimley, whom we all know, to introduce the guest speaker…” and Grimley gets up and says that it gives him great pleasure to introduce a man or a woman he hadn’t even heard of until two days ago, and even then it isn’t finished because after the speech, a man gets up to thank the guest speaker, a man who is so nervous about doing this that he hasn’t even listened to the speech….Dr Wordsmith writes: I am sorry to interrupt, but is there a question coming out of all this?Yes. At least, I think not.Sometimes when we yawn it makes a very loud noise and sometimes it is totally silent. Does the English language have a pair of words that usefully distinguish between the two?Dr Wordsmith writes: If it ever did, it does not now.For my sins, I sometimes have to attend posh dinners where there is an after-dinner speaker. Is there in fact such a word?Dr Wordsmith writes: Not so far as I know.When you’re peeling an apple or a potato, and the peel comes off not in little bits but one long continuous strip which can sometimes measure a foot or more in length, is there a word to describe that long length of peel?Dr Wordsmith writes: No. I just wanted to know if electricians have a term to describe this, because very often I have wanted to say to my wife: “Oh, look, that bulb must be on the verge of needing replacement because it’s started to .. to…” and then I can never think of the word.

No, as far as I know, no word has ever been coined to describe the phenomenon.We very often know when an electric light bulb is about to expire because it starts flickering very rapidly as if on the point of burning out. (Oddly enough, a bulb can keep up this flickering activity for several days, keeping you on perpetual tenterhooks.)It’s not exactly flickering, more a sort of electrical equivalent of stammering, or a very rapid turning on and off of a light. Is there any word to describe this sort of cutting?Dr Wordsmith writes: Yes, I have often noticed that but never thought about it before. Sometimes, though, I forget the water is in there, and without pouring it out first I put a couple of spoonfuls of tea leaves into what I think is an empty pot but which now contains tepid water! Which is very annoying, as you have to pour it out and start all over again! But I just wanted to know if there was a word for this, presumably very common, error.
Dr Wordsmith writes: You’d think there would be, wouldn’t you? But as far as I can make out, there isn’t.Have you ever noticed that when you are cutting a large piece of paper with scissors, something odd often happens and the scissors start cutting without being moved? You are happily snipping across an expanse of newspaper or wrapping paper and suddenly you realise that although you have ceased to manipulate the handles of the scissors, the blades are still moving through the paper and cutting with the sheer pressure of the blades, or rather with the pressure of your hands on the scissors It’s almost as if the blades are surfing through the paper. All yours, Doc!

When making a pot of tea I always obey folk wisdom and put some boiling water in the empty pot to warm it up. I’m afraid our grasp of vocabulary is still not nearly as good as it should be – only this morning I heard a politician on the Today programme say “refute” when he meant “rebut”, a mistake I have heard on that programme every day of my life – so I have brought our ever-popular lexicologist Dr Wordsmith back again to help out with all your queries on the meaning of words. And remember that this is the realisation of a dream for which no concrete blueprint exists – as the original theatre site is submerged forever beneath London’s first, listed, concrete building.The author is a Shakespeare scholar who writes on contemporary interpretations of Elizabethan theatre..