Clegg: Brown's leadership is "running out of steam"

Nick Clegg has described Gordon Brown's policy plans as "a hotch potch of unrelated Whitehall schemes" with no unifying" vision from a prime minister who was "running out of steam".

Mr Clegg said both the Prime Minister and David Cameron were treating the voters as if they were children who were "too young to know the truth".

He said: "Neither are willing to come clean on the difficult long-term savings we will need to make to balance the nation's books."

"It's like a big hoax: they trade insults and numbers but hide the truth." The public had been promised a vision based on decentralisation and personal entitlements but many of these entitlements were "just the recycled versions of old targets", he said.

"Last week you called a cut an investment. This week you are calling a target an entitlement. Can you tell us exactly what's the difference?"

The Liberal Democrat Leader concluded that the Prime Minister's statement was nothing more than a "hotchpotch of unrelated Whitehall schemes, a ministerial cut-and-paste job".