The calls keep multiplying for Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats to stake out more distinctive positions, but the Lib Dems' most distinctive positions are not always very popular

MY COLUMN in the print edition this week looks at a puzzle facing the Liberal Democrats, junior partner in David Cameron's coalition. Among Lib Dem members of parliament and among party activists there are growing demands for their leader Nick Clegg to stake out distinctively liberal positions, in opposition to the Tories. I report on a striking meeting of the parliamentary party at which the role of Lib Dem peers in amending the NHS bill was cheered but also deplored because—according to one leading MP on the party's left—it is a waste for members of the House of Lords to take all the credit for beating up the horrible Tories, when it is elected MPs who need all the differentiation they can get.

I think those frustrated calls are dangerous for two reasons. First, the Lib Dems are never going to be able to out-oppose the opposition Labour Party from within government. And secondly, many of Mr Clegg's most distinctive liberal policies on law and order, immigration or Europe put him on the wrong side of majority public opinion. A number of figures close to Mr Clegg see the dangers, I report, and think instead that the party needs to accept it is never going back to the easy oppositionism of the past.

The Clegg camp thinks that the Lib Dems, despite their woeful poll numbers at the moment, are still well placed to occupy the centre ground of British politics, where economic competence overlaps with a mission to reduce social inequality. Its members think that under Ed Miliband Labour has foolishly surrendered the centre ground by heading leftwards, while at the same time recently accepting the case for some spending cuts—which the Cleggites think will force Labour to fight on the two coalition parties' home turf of deficit reduction. As for their Tory allies, the Lib Dems look at their positions on everything from Europe to crime, immigration and the environment, and sense the Tories moving rightwards, away from the modernising centre ground once claimed by Mr Cameron. They also note that Conservatives have proved themselves capable of losing elections in the past, despite offering policies in line with majority opinion on things like Europe.

I wonder if that is too comforting an analysis. I still think Mr Clegg has a problem, which can be summarised like this: he is British, not Dutch. If Mr Clegg were a Dutch politician, he would be operating in a system of proportional representation and permanent coalition government. In such a system, it is perfectly possible to prosper by offering a set of liberal beliefs held by between 15% and 20% of voters (in a good year). At election time in countries such as the Netherlands, liberal voters turn out in order to inject a dose of their minority ideology in the final coalition mix.

In the British system, we do not just have first-past-the-post electoral rules, we also have first-past-the-post politics. Instead of seeking 15% of the vote everywhere, Lib Dems have to come first in a series of target seats, and—given their views—can often only achieve this through a mixture of hyper-local campaigning and appeals to tactical voting. That has left the party wedded to all-things-to-all-voters opportunism.

I was not able to find room this week for my favourite Lib Dem campaigning story, tucked away in a biography of Nick Clegg by Chris Bowers. It involves Vince Cable addressing party activists on the south coast in Eastbourne. Great to be here, the business secretary tells them, though I always have to remember that Lib Dems are in favour of bypasses in Eastbourne, but against them in Lewes (19 miles away).

As part of my research, I went to Mr Clegg's constituency of Sheffield Hallam, a rare pocket of middle-class affluence on the moors above the otherwise solidly Labour city of Sheffield. I interviewed several local Lib Dem party officials and councillors, some of whom have spent years canvassing and campaigning with Mr Clegg on the doorsteps, and recruited him to the seat when he first secured election to Westminster in 2005.

Even there, in one of the party's most solid seats, the refrain was that there is no such thing as a truly safe Lib Dem constituency. Sheffield Hallam was taken from the Tories in 1997 and held ever since with votes "borrowed" from Labour voters. Now, they say, that strategy has been greatly complicated by being in government with the Tories (though I met nobody who thinks Mr Clegg's seat is in real danger). It is always easier to be against things, said one local Lib Dem, wistfully. The party is on a painful journey from opposition to being a party of government, in short. It cannot go back.

Here's the column:

IT WOULD probably be a mistake for Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, to walk into many British pubs—imagine a bar suddenly stilled, pints hovering in mid-air and a silence broken only by growls from the landlord's dog. Among those who voted for his Liberal Democrats in 2010, nearly two-thirds say Mr Clegg is doing a bad job. Most polls put party support at around 10%.

A warmer welcome awaits at the Royal Hotel in Dungworth, a stone-built inn on the edge of the Peak District, in the rural north of Mr Clegg's constituency of Sheffield Hallam. Dungworth lies in Clegg country: locals handed the Lib Dem leader a thumping majority in 2010. But even here, Mr Clegg's place in David Cameron's Conservative-led coalition worries voters. They want to see Lib Dems staking out clearer differences with their Tory partners. Yet calls to be more distinctive trigger a fresh problem. Many of Mr Clegg's most distinctive beliefs—from his liberal views on immigration and crime to his pragmatic approach to the European Union—put him in opposition to most voters.

The puzzle is summarised by Dave Lambert, landlord of the Royal. He praises Mr Clegg as a local MP, crediting him with leaning on bosses at Yorkshire Water to shorten a nearby road closure from weeks—as had been threatened—to a few hours. His national record is a “different matter”, grumbles Mr Lambert. Locals are “realistic” about what a deputy prime minister can do in a coalition, he says. But Mr Clegg has not held his ground when it comes to securing public subsidies for Sheffield. Nor is the Lib Dem boss tough enough on the issues that dominate conversation at Mr Lambert's bar: namely, the need to clamp down on benefit fraud, toughen British border controls, control immigration, put the EU in its place and generally “look after our own”.

As it happens, Mr Clegg's seat will stay Lib Dem thanks to tactical voting, suggests the landlord. Labour stands “not a cat in hell's chance” in Sheffield Hallam, an affluent spot since Victorian times when factory managers built mansions there, safely uphill and upstream from the soot-choked city. Mr Lambert, a former steelworker, loathes the Tories, blaming them for the loss of Yorkshire's industries. Thus, though Mr Clegg's core supporters are the better-off—“the people with more chimney pots”—Mr Lambert feels he has little choice but to vote Clegg.

That personal view of Mr Clegg's situation is echoed by local Lib Dem activists and councillors. They talk of a “very difficult” adjustment after the 2010 election, and the party's loss of Sheffield city council in 2011. There was special rage among the many students who live locally, incensed when Mr Clegg broke an election promise to oppose higher tuition fees (a policy he knew was foolish before the election, but had failed to change).

After more than a year of shouted abuse and front doors slammed in canvassers' faces, Lib Dems report signs that undergraduates are adjusting to the new fees system, which seems not to be deterring poorer students, they note. People close to Mr Clegg make a painfully ironic prediction: by the next general election tuition fees may have lost toxicity as a policy, but Mr Clegg's broken promise will still be held against him.

The Lib Dems cannot out-oppose Labour

The view from Dungworth carries broader lessons. Britain's third party has always built success by assiduously serving local interests and appealing for tactical votes. The party has held Sheffield Hallam since 1997 with votes “borrowed” from Labour supporters. Nationally, the Lib Dems prospered for years by posing as an eco-pacifist soft alternative to New Labour. In seat after seat Lib Dems are now watching the anti-Tory tactical vote fragment, migrating to Labour, to the Greens or into sullen non-voting.

To date, fewer Lib Dem seats have been won by borrowing the votes of centrist Conservatives. Mr Clegg's inner circle—standing on the free-market liberal wing of their party—believe that they must win over more such “soft Tories” to replace lost left-wingers, and survive the next election in reasonable shape.

So a big choice looms for the party. Many Lib Dems mourn their past as a party of instinctive opposition with a leftish tinge. They have been cheered by a string of clashes with the Conservatives, notably over tax, egalitarianism in education and—above all—the National Health Service. Lib Dem members of the House of Lords have greatly amended a mammoth NHS reform bill, succeeding mostly in making it more complicated, removing mechanisms to promote competition and adding committees.

At a recent meeting of the Lib Dem parliamentary party, Tim Farron, an ambitious left-winger and party president, reportedly cheered this anti-Tory success, but bemoaned the fact that unelected peers had led the charge against the NHS reforms and got the credit for it, rather than Lib Dem MPs who need votes. That drew a rebuke from Jeremy Browne, a foreign office minister on the party's free-market wing. Success should not be measured by how many Conservative initiatives the Lib Dems frustrate, said Mr Browne: we should not try to be a better opposition party than Labour, but a better governing party than the Tories.

Mr Clegg's inner circle agree. The party can never go back to its previous easy existence, they say. Mr Clegg himself accepts that some of his views on immigration, law and order or Europe are on the wrong side of public opinion, especially in an age of austerity. It is a “shitty time to be a liberal”, he tells colleagues.

Actually, Britain is a tough place to be a liberal at any time, with a winner-takes-all voting system that punishes leaders like Mr Clegg, a minority within a minority party. The bet for Mr Clegg is that he does not need mass appeal: he just has to earn (or win back) the respect of enough voters to hold a balance of power in the next parliament. Popularity, of the sort that earns a warm pub welcome, will have to wait.