Nick Clegg shows his hand

The main thrust of Monday's Guardian splash – Lib Dems rule out coalition government – made perfect sense. As Stephen Tall has argued , the Lib Dems will pay a heavy price at the ballot box if they appear over-eager to dive under the duvet with either of the major parties. All those who are desperate to see the back of Brown would run a mile from Nick Clegg if they thought there was any chance he would extend life support to a wounded prime minister; but there are also disgruntled lefties in Labour seats – which are now the Lib Dems main targets – who close their ears to the party if there were any suggestion it could prove to be a trapdoor to Tory rule. The point is only underlined by the realisation that the parliamentary party would in all likelihood fall to bits if Clegg tried to make a full coalition stick. Can anyone really imagine the smart, free-market economist David Laws slavishly serving in a Brown-led administration whose reason to be is big government spending? But by the same token, can we really envisage anti-poverty crusaders such as Simon Hughes or Steve Webb standing by meekly as Cameron and Osborne sharpen the axe? Much better, as Clegg proposes, to declare a plague on both houses upfront, but signal a willingness to trade – at a decontaminating distance – with either of them in order to advance a few heartwarming and distinctively Lib Dem goals. But this "so far, so sensible" reading breaks down on close examination of Clegg's reported four-part shopping list. Three of the four items strike a reasonable note. Their proposed tax reform, to boost the personal allowance, is not to my social democratic taste as too much of vast amount of money involved goes to people who do not particularly need it. But it is clear and popular, while it is also distinctively liberal to want to lift lower earners out of the clutches of the tax system. A green new deal for the economy is hard to argue with, even if vague, and the case for political reforms that go way beyond those proposed by Labour is crashingly obvious after the expenses fiasco. The fourth item, however, is a "pupil premium" for poorer children. The idea sounds like a jolly nice one, in essence it is to give schools extra cash in addition to the normal capitation fees when they take a pupil from a poor home. But the experts point out that spending is already skewed towards poorer areas, so this is really a technical argument about the most effective mechanism for redistributing funds – by funnelling them directly to schools, instead of, as now, going through the local authorities. This is hardly stuff to rouse political passion, nor for that matter will it provide the material for a winning speech out on the stump. And if it will make a difference, it will do so through market mechanisms that will upset parts of the party – the theory goes that money chases the individual pupil out of bad schools, and into the good ones, leaving the bad to shut down. Meanwhile, market-minded Liberal Democrats, such as Tim Leunig , who instinctively warm to the idea, have looked at the American evidence and concluded that the scheme would require an order of magnitude more money than the party has presently earmarked in order to make a real difference. The real oddity, though, does not lie in such nerdish details. No, the reason why the pupil premium is a curious choice of negotiating card is because one of the two parties the Lib Dems would be haggling with are already committed to the very same thing – in name at least. The Conservative education spokesman, Michael Gove, reaffirmed his commitment to the premium in a Guardian interview last year . No doubt the Lib Dems say their premium is bigger and better than the measly Tory variety, but quibbling over the numbers is not the best way to make the Liberal Democrats sound distinctive. It seems bizarre to suggest that a detailed social policy change, which the Tories are already committed to, will have equal weight in negotiations to the whole political reform agenda (which includes PR and everything else) to which the Conservatives are implacably opposed. I'm forced to conclude that Clegg, who – though he is no Tory – is temperamentally closer to Cameron than Brown, has hand-picked his cards on the basis that he wants to be sure that, when the time comes, he will be ready to deal with Dave.