Nick Clegg was smiling broadly as he told the Liberal Democrat spring conference at the weekend that he had discussed his next Evening Standard column with the paper’s new editor George Osborne. “I told him it would be a coruscating attack on Theresa May,” the former deputy prime minister said. “He loved it.” But it was not really a joke. The former chancellor — who promised to be the “voice for the liberal mainstream majority” after he was fired by Mrs May — now clearly intends to take this role out of parliament and into the media. For all the controversy over the appointment, its real political significance is as part of a wider resurgence of liberalism.

Newton’s third law states that: “For every action