Some think they are already struggling so hard to make ends meet that "higher taxes" must mean higher taxes for somebody else; whereas in fact, to make a substantial difference, it would have to affect very many people in work.Labour knows about this, however bitter the knowledge tastes The Lib Dems, it seems, don't. There is, they remind us, polling "evidence" that most people would be happy to pay more. This is tosh, another minor but eye-catching example of our national hypocrisy, which is particularly glaring whenever we're confronted by women with clipboards who appear to have some connection with authority.People think they ought to be happy to pay higher taxes, for sound Judeo- Christian reasons, but don't actually vote to do so. Unspecific promises to cut waste are the last resort of populist economics.

No, a shrewd taxpayer, scanning Mr Ashdown's speech, would undoubtedly conclude that it implied a party that would let tax rise well beyond the extra pounds 2bn.Many on the left would cheer and are unapologetic about the politics. Where, if anywhere, should the state be doing less? What wasn't a priority? Instead, the sole, brief note of hesitation about higher state spending was that familiar stand- by: "We will wage war on waste."Yes, so do all modern governments So would John Redwood. And the general impression in the speech was that more spending is urgently needed almost everywhere.The really tough, brave thing would have been to explain where old-fashioned Liberal self-reliance was still applicable. He cited three commitments - pre-school education, training for 16 to 18-year-olds and adult retraining. Yet a few moments earlier he had said: "Go to a school where there are more than 35 kids in a class because of the government cuts, and tell me that money's got nothing to do with it." This implies more money for teachers' salaries, which is important but isn't part of the costed commitment. But at fringe meetings it is clear that the party wants to spend far, far more than the pounds 2bn cited by Ashdown.Even in his own speech there was ambiguity.

I am not so sure.Ashdown argued that British education is underfunded and requires more taxpayers' money. After Gillian Shephard's leaked memo, this is hardly controversial, even among Conservatives desperate for tax cuts. This is paraded as the central example of Lib-Dem honesty and straightforwardness. Which brings me to what Ashdown is proudest of and what Labour reformers will rightly regard as the speech's greatest weakness - its unequivocal commitment, at a time when the British electorate is very heavily taxed, to taxing it more. But 1945 is the central year in Labour folk memory; to invoke it so passionately here was to execute a war-dance on Labour's tribal burial-grounds.And both Ashdown's examples were, of course, of fundamentally big-state revolutions. The 1906 government was indeed a Liberal one, and Liberal thinkers were very influential in the Attlee years.