The British supermarket chain Tesco has agreed to sell more than 150 stores of its loss-making Fresh & Easy chain as well as distribution and production facilities in Riverside, California to YFE Holdings, an affiliate of Yucaipa Companies.

The sale is part of Tesco’s plans to focus on markets that offer significant growth potential and strong returns.

As part of the deal, Tesco will loan the new business circa £80m secured against the Riverside Campus facility. In addition, more than 4,000 employees will also be transferred to the new business.

Tesco said that the total cash outflow relating to the closure of these stores, other expenses and the loan is expected to be no more than £150m.

Philip Clarke, CEO of Tesco, said: “The decision we are announcing today represents the best outcome for Tesco shareholders and Fresh & Easy’s stakeholders. It offers us an orderly and efficient exit from the US market, while protecting the jobs of more than 4,000 colleagues at Fresh & Easy.”

Fresh & Easy, which opened its first store in November 2007, has 200 stores in California, Nevada and Arizona. It employs more than 5,000 people. Tesco is planning to close stores that not included in this sale in the near future.

The stores, Riverside campus and other assets generated net losses before tax of £163.4m during the financial year ended 23 February 2013.

The British grocer lost about $2bn over the last five years in the US.

Yucaipa Companies is owned by the US billionaire Ron Burkle.

The transaction, which is subject to legal and regulatory approvals, is expected to complete within three months.

Business process services provider Synnex Corporation has signed an agreement to acquire IBM’s global customer care business process outsourcing services (BPO) business for $505m to expand its geographic and industry reach.

The acquired business generated revenue of $1.3bn last year, which is more than 1 per cent of IBM’s overall revenue.

Synnex, which will pay a purchase price of about $430m in cash and $75m in common stock, will integrate the acquired business with its global business services division Concentrix Corporation.

The acquisition is expected to expand Concentrix’s global footprint across six continents to approximately 45,000 staff and 50 plus delivery centers.

Kevin Murai, president and CEO of Synnex, said: “This acquisition will significantly extend our portfolio of offerings and delivery capabilities that will make Concentrix a global Top 10 player in this growing market.”

The transaction is expected to add an estimated $120m in EBITDA and about $0.55 in fully diluted earnings per share (EPS) to Synnex, apart from enhancing its margin profile.

As part of the transaction, Concentrix will become an IBM strategic business partner for global customer care BPO services, under a multi-year agreement. 

Lori Steele, general manager of global process services at IBM, said: “This partnership between IBM and Synnex will provide our clients with the innovation they have come to expect from IBM through our deep capabilities in advanced analytics, social business, cloud and smarter commerce, complemented by Concentrix’ flexible and adaptive global customer care delivery network.” 

The transaction, which is subject to regulatory approvals, is expected to close in the next few months.

Syria’s foreign minister said on Tuesday night that the country intends to sign up to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and would halt its production of chemical arms, allow weapons inspectors in and disclose details of its chemical weapon stockpile.

The Chemical Weapons Convention was adopted by member states in 1992 and came into force in 1997. Signatories pledge not to use chemical weapons, to halt any trade or production of chemical weapons and to destroy their stockpile within ten years of signing. Syria is not the only state that has refused to sign the convention. Four other states, Angola, Egypt, North Korea and South Sudan have not signed up, and Israel and Myanmar signed the convention but never ratified it.

As South Sudan only achieved independence in 2011, perhaps it can be let off the hook – the world’s newest state, it could be argued, has had bigger problems to deal with. It’s hardly surprising that North Korea hasn’t signed, although this doesn’t make it less worrying. Egypt has said its refusal to sign the CWC is linked to Israel’s non-participation in the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. It used chemical weapons in Yemen in the 1960s. Angola has no officially confirmed stockpile of chemical weapons, although there are several reported incidents of chemical weapons having been used in the country. 

Similarly, Israel’s delay in ratifying the CWC has raised questions about its possession of chemical weapons – with this recent Foreign Policy investigation suggesting, on the basis of CIA files, that it has built up a significant stockpile. Questions still loom about Myanmar’s chemical weapon stockpile too, and its alleged use of chemical weapons during the country’s civil war.

Even more revealing is the list of those who have signed up but who will not meet the Convention’s deadlines for destroying their chemical weapons stockpile. This includes the United States and Russia, a recent enthusiast for the treaty when it comes to Syria.

So how much power will the CWC actually have? Both Russia and the US must know that unless it is backed by force, the answer is none at all. Equally they will be aware that sometimes the easiest way to deal with awkward international treaties is to sign them to much fanfare and then quietly ignore them.

If you didn't see Obama's address to the nation on Syria yesterday evening, you missed a pretty inglorious moment in the 44th President's career.

He opened strongly; invoking, in no uncertain terms, the ungodly horror of Assad's chemical attack:

The situation profoundly changed ... on August 21st, when Assad’s government gassed to death over a thousand people, including hundreds of children. The images from this massacre are sickening: Men, women, children lying in rows, killed by poison gas. Others foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath. A father clutching his dead children, imploring them to get up and walk. On that terrible night, the world saw in gruesome detail the terrible nature of chemical weapons, and why the overwhelming majority of humanity has declared them off-limits - a crime against humanity, and a violation of the laws of war.

Strong words. And they got stronger.

This was not always the case. In World War I, American GIs were among the many thousands killed by deadly gas in the trenches of Europe. In World War II, the Nazis used gas to inflict the horror of the Holocaust.

So far, so very bullish. Like a lawyer summing up his arguments in front of a jury, with surgical precision Obama proceeded to outline the reasons for taking immediate action. Chemical weapons are a violation of international law, he said. More than that; they are a violation of our codes of conduct; and, moreover, an indirect but very real threat to American security.

“If we fail to act,” he said, “the Assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons. As the ban against these weapons erodes, other tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas, and using them. Over time, our troops would again face the prospect of chemical warfare on the battlefield. And it could be easier for terrorist organizations to obtain these weapons, and to use them to attack civilians.”

He continued that allowing Assad to get away with this massacre could threaten America's regional allies, including Israel. And that it could ultimately embolden Iran in choosing to develop its nuclear weapon capability, rather than pursuing a path of peace.

This was the speech you could have predicted five days ago, setting out his stall before the nation in advance of the vote in Congress. But the situation has changed: and next, after this short, intense and heartfelt call to arms, the President performed a dizzying series of volte-face to try to meet it.

“...But I am the President of the world's only constitutional democracy,” he began, reciting almost verbatim for a while from his speech of last week, emphasising his reasons for taking the vote to Congress instead of acting unilaterally as Commander-in-Chief.

Next, he attempted to assuage commonly-voiced fears and misgivings about his surgical strike plan. “Many of you have asked: won't this put us on a slippery slope to war? …My answer is simple: I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria.”

And, more interestingly: “Why should we get involved at all in a place that's so complicated, and where … 'those who come after Assad may be enemies of human rights?'”

That is a pretty good question; and the President answers it with aplomb: “It’s true that some of Assad’s opponents are extremists. But Al-Qaeda will only draw strength in a more chaotic Syria if people there see the world doing nothing to prevent innocent civilians from being gassed to death. The majority of the Syrian people - and the Syrian opposition we work with - just want to live in peace, with dignity and freedom. And the day after any military action, we would redouble our efforts to achieve a political solution that strengthens those who reject the forces of tyranny and extremism.”

Well, quite. But then Obama makes another lightning-fast pivot; this time to grasp the offer by Vladimir Putin, offering to take Assad's chemical weapons into Russia's own dubious care. “It's too early to tell whether this offer will succeed”, says the President; but then – suddenly – announces that he has postponed the vote in Congress until the veracity of this offer can be established.

Wait, what? Who would have suspected, listening to that hearty call to arms in the first half of the speech, that we would end up with an equivocation, a wait-and-see, a hold on even the delaying tactic that was already in process?

All told, this bewildering speech was an attempt for Obama to please everyone, and it will end up pleasing no-one. To those implacably opposed to action, he still looks like a warmonger. To those who feel action is needed, it was nothing less than a further shirking of his Presidential duty. What was most odd was that, for parts of the speech at least, Obama sounded like he counted himself firmly among the latter. But his lack of action is more telling than any number of fine words.

This speech was a contradiction: an appeal to conscience without any appeal to action, a study in vacillation. Another aspect is perhaps at play: if recent Congressional polling models are anything to go by, the President was on track for a humiliating defeat in any case. Does he now regret last week's surprising democratic gesture?

Putin's supervision of the removal of Assad's chemical weapons into protective custody may well be cleverly calculated only to dial up Assad's status as a proxy of Moscow, no matter how it is couched. Russia's core aim is to protect its only ally in the Middle East, and its only Mediterranean naval base. Rebel forces might also see this as an admission of American defeat, and they will turn in ever-greater numbers to Al-Quaeda affiliates. For Putin, this is a move of some political genius; if it succeeds, he has cemented his influence in the Levant, and if it fails he still looks like a peacemaker.

Meanwhile, even if chemical weapons are genuinely out of the the equation, the body count in Syria will continue to pile up, and a political solution will become ever-more difficult to seek. Because, really, what right will Obama have to ask for it?

Britain doesn’t like learning languages. Year on year the numbers taking languages at school have fallen, leading to Britain regularly being placed at the bottom of European surveys into language proficiency. This year alone, German A-Level takers were down by 14.53% and French learners by 9.9%. This is often explained by citing a lack of motivation for learning foreign languages - it’s because we’re learning them in the wrong way.

Most courses designed to teach a language revolve almost exclusively around communication. Learning French, German or Spanish is said to be beneficial solely because it allows you to get by when speaking to French, German or Spanish people. As such, these courses teach set phrases to help the speaker out in common situations. They essentially make sure you buy your bread from the boulangerie and your train tickets from the gare - perfect for those who are holidaying abroad and want a return ticket to the baker’s.

But for anyone who wants to get to grips with a language properly, this approach is ultimately flawed.  Communication is an important part of language learning – of course it is. But in a world where English is the lingua franca, it should no longer be Britain’s main motive for learning another tongue.

Language is, after all, much more than a communicative tool. French is considered beautiful and important not because it allows you to speak to French people about your pets and hair colour, but rather because of its wealth of literature, its role as the language of diplomacy throughout history, even the way it sounds and flows. If the only thing you learn to say is “J’ai deux frères et j’aime bien jouer au ping pong”, these benefits become severely limited. All language learning has to start somewhere, and this simple vocabulary is more than likely to be sufficient for a long weekend in France.

Teaching primary pupils with the same approach as teaching holidaymakers, however, is bizarre. Yet the syllabus up to GCSE puts all the emphasis on translating banal English phrases into equally banal French, German or Spanish ones. It borders on encouraging pupils to translate word for word and pupils, quite understandably, are bored by this approach.

We need to shift our focus. At the moment, the reason to learn a language is ostensibly to translate your own ideas and experiences. Up to GCSE pupils are encouraged to talk about their own lives, but only by translating English words. This is not the way to spark enthusiasm for foreign cultures, and will usually be greeted with the response “but everyone already speaks English”.  In a way, it’s very Anglo-centric – the focus is on how we can say English things in a different language.

Instead, we ought to learn the joys and peculiarities of another culture, rather than ironing them out. The Germans, for example, use the excellent “Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher” – an instrument designed to help you eat your boiled egg and which literally translates as “Egg-shell-breaking-point-causer” as it causes the egg shell to split in two at its breaking point. Not only is this a great word, but it also highlights the highly logical structure of German, a logic that extends beyond German as a language to other areas of German life and culture. It gives an insight into the German way of thinking.

Similarly, the stereotypical French aversion to English and American intrusion on their culture is demonstrated by the Acadamie Française’s recent decision to ban “le hashtag” in favour of “mot-dièse”. It’s these sorts of peculiarities that we miss out on when simply translate from English as opposed to aiming to learn from other languages.

The merit of languages should be stressed in a more holistic fashion. Whether through literature, film or art, language teaching should focus also on the culture that surrounds a language, on the way that foreign languages differ to English and how this allows for subtle and nuanced distinctions in meaning. To learn a language should be to immerse yourself in a different world and way of life, to view a situation through a completely new lens. Not only will this make learning languages more appealing, it also means that language learners gain a much better understanding of what’s around them, encouraging them to focus on more than the English-speaking world.

Although the ability to communicate is still important, it should be seen as one constituent of language learning. If translating pleasantries into simple language is a learner’s first impression of a language and culture, they are likely to be left disappointed and frustrated. If they are greeted with a new way of understanding, they are likely to be enthused and motivated to continue it further. 

On weekdays at 6.20pm, CBeebies, the BBC’s channel for the under-4s, screens the popular show In the Night Garden. Toddlers across the UK watch Iggle Piggle, Upsy Daisy and their friends having adventures in fairy-tale woodlands filled with sunshine and flowers. Described by the BBC as representing a “magical place that exists between waking and sleeping in a child’s imagination,” the programme is both enjoyable and educational. The explanatory webpage emphasises its playfulness and confidence-building repetition, plus its use of words, rhyme and music, which create a “happy world” of “loveable characters” and “nursery rhyme nonsense.” Pre-schoolers love to sing along with the characters and add to their collection of the show’s merchandise, from talking toys to clothing, play-doh sets and lunch boxes. Parents can be reassured by the BBC’s admission that the “tone of the programme is deliberately literary” although it is perhaps more literary than they realise. What these tots are actually getting is a dose of the conventions of medieval poetry. Specifically, Chaucer’s dream visions.

Chaucer is best remembered today for his unfinished collection of stories The Canterbury Tales, written at the end of the fifteenth century. It is vibrant with humour, irony and brilliant characters. But this is only a portion of his work. He also made a translation of the French dream vision The Romance of the Rose and wrote several of his own versions of the genre. In these, characterisation takes a back seat in favour of more early forms of allegory, where figures were less individuals, than representations of abstract virtues and vices. Chaucer’s poems, The Parliament of Fowls, The Legend of Good Women, The Book of the Duchess and The House of Fame, follow strict conventions, like a tick-list, of details relating to structure, setting and characters. And, funnily enough, CBeebies’ In the Night Garden contains many of them too.

The programme begins with a sleepy-eyed toddler, lying in bed, having the palm of their hand stroked soothingly. “The night is black and the stars are bright and the sea is dark and deep” begins the song, almost hypnotically. Just as the toddler drifts off, so dream poetry often begin with the narrator lying down restlessly and hoping for the onset of sleep. As “the day began to fail and the dark night” arrives, as in The Parliament of Fowls, the boundaries blur between the conscious and waking worlds. Here, Chaucer’s narrator often meets a guide, who helps him navigate through this dream world. For CBeebies’ sleepy toddlers, there is the blue, fluffy figure of Iggle Piggle, perhaps child-speak for “Little Pickle.” Presented like a toddler’s drawing of a man, with his little shock of red hair and matching blanket, he is the “everyman” bridge between the worlds.

Iggle Piggle journeys to the realm of dreams in a boat. He drifts away on the dark waves, with a little light at the top of his mast showing the way through the gloom. This is timeless literary convention, a common metaphor for the process of sleep, and puts distance between the real world and the imagined. We recognise it as a journey, a temporary measure before we enter the dream proper. Iggle Piggle’s boat never lands. We don’t see him beach it on a distant shore and climb out. This is where the magic begins. Chaucer might supply us with a sudden capsize: “the steering oar did suddenly drag him overboard in his sleep” but the BBC’s explanation is far more toddler-friendly. As we watch, the stars turn into white flowers, which bud and open, like unfolding dreams. A symbolic barrier has been crossed, like falling asleep or dying, passing mysteriously into another realm. This is the world of the Night Garden.

Iggle Piggle finds himself in a landscape of bright colours. Friends await him in an idealised garden where the sun always shines, large stylised flowers bloom and others cluster in bright balls, like gems. It is an eternal, temperate summer, as the dream convention demands; the sun is “clad all new again,” almost in an inversion of the winter of Narnia. Chaucer’s gardens have “no awkwardness of hot or cold” in their “summer sunlight” and “blue, bright, clear” air. His woodland is lush and green, with trees “fresh and green as emerald” and sweet grass “embroidered” with flowers. The BBC’s landscape is reminiscent of this, with “blossoming boughs beside a river” and “ flowers white, blue, yellow and red,” peopled by a cast of unusual imaginary figures. Yet it is Upsy Daisy whom Iggle Piggle most wants to see: “of all the flowers in the mead, love I the white and red I see, such as men call daisies.”  There is no doubt in the children’s minds that she is his BFF, his best friend forever.

Iggle Piggle and Upsy Daisy’s love affair is a chaste one. They hold hands and even sometimes give each other cloth-mouthed kisses but theirs is a courtly love in the best of medieval traditions. In appearance Upsy Daisy is very feminine, the opposite to Iggle Piggle, with her pink and orange hair and clothes contrasting with his blueness, the epitomic symbols of masculinity and femininity. She is aptly named. Chaucer reverences the humble flower as “the eye of day, the empress and flower of flowers all,” “a daisy is crowned with white petals light,” suggestive of the character’s sticking up coronet of hair. Chaucer’s idealised women, often the Goddess Flora, are the “flower of flowers,” colourful, bright and full of life. Upsy Daisy is also accomplished and affectionate; she sings, dances and kisses flowers, causing them to grow, as Chaucer’s Flora does. The narrator of The Book of the Duchess watches “her dance so gracefully, carol and sing so sweetly.”

Upsy Daisy looks like, and is, a child’s doll. The heroines of Chaucer’s dreams are also similarly mannequinesque, with “golden hair and wide bright eyes.” One is even strangely boneless and unreal; her neck is “smooth and flat without hollow or collarbone” and “every limb rounded, fleshy and not over-thin,” while another is “a feminine creature, that never formed by nature, was such another seen.” They are as animate as the toys that people the Night Garden. Iggle Piggle’s little fabric heart, however, has been won. Quick to swoon in situations of intense emotion, such as a sneeze, he recalls the guide of The Book of the Duchess, eager “to worship her and serve as best I then could,” who declares his love but “she never gave a straw for all my tale.” The toys play with the ball, symbolic of the to and fro of romance. They are the lovers of medieval legend, forever enclosed within their perfect garden but childlike, safe and innocent. And, just as in The Parliament of Fowls, they have their own Cupid, the dumpy brown Makka Pakka, reminiscent of a little Renaissance putto.

Upsy Daisy’s bed is a potent symbol. Seemingly with a life of its own, it is always rushing through the landscape to music, coming to rest among the daisies. A bright yellow, it recalls Venus’s “bed of gold” as described by Chaucer. Unsurprisingly, it is an entirely chaste bed, given over to sleep alone, although its playful trickery reminds us of the illusion and deception of dreams. Only Upsy Daisy is allowed to occupy this bed, as her sleeping and waking, in fact her existence as a dream-woman, are functions of Iggle Piggle’s subconscious.

Just like the dream visions, In the Night Garden never deviates from its structure. The beginning of the end is signalled by the BBC’s own parliament of fowls, a multi-coloured collection of birds signing in harmony. These are a common symbol for Chaucer, ranging from a “sweet” or “angelic” chorus in most poems, to gathering on St Valentine’s day in order to select a mate. The “lays of love” they sing in The Legend of Good Women “upon the branches full of blossom soft” could describe their serenading of the toys in the sunshine as well as signalling the approach of bedtime to their young audience. After this, all the characters come together to sing. As in Chaucer’s poems, the landscape is peopled with other gods and goddesses, mysterious and allegorical figures. From the giant Haahoos to the tiny Pontipines, to the train-like Ninky Nonk and flying Pinky Ponk, we are reminded of dream-like discrepancies in perspective and alternative, child-like ways of viewing the world.

Together, the toys sing and dance under a gazebo, decorated with their images and flashing with coloured lights. It’s a bit of a love-in. As the BBC’s website declares, all characters “interact and love each other… unconditionally.” Chaucer’s poems contain descriptions of various temples to Venus, made of glass, with long pillars and ornamented with images. Women, in The Parliament of Fowls“danced they there, that was their duty, year on year.” It is a happy, utopian vision, attractive and inclusive to children, who sing or sway along with the familiar moves.

After the song, the vision is ended by sleep. The characters stop playing, say good night and close their eyes. Only Iggle Piggle is left awake, although ironically, as the narrator, he is actually asleep in the external “reality” of the structure. He still clutches his red blanket, a constant reminder throughout of his dormant state and imminent return home. The cessation of the dream world signals to the audience that he is about to awake and that the program will end. The credits roll over the image of him in the boat again and the watching toddlers, symbolised by the child falling asleep at the start, “wake” again from its spell. That is when the real bedtime arrives and the hard work for the parents begins. With any luck, someone they “know is safe and snug and drifting off to sleep.”

Over the summer a new consensus emerged in the media that our economy was back on track. Tabloids proclaimed "Britain is booming" as a raft of positive figures and forecasts suggested the economy had returned to growth. It’s been enough to embolden George Osborne - this week he announced we had "turned a corner" and claiming victory for his economic policies.

Positive growth rates (even if they are low) are obviously good news for the coalition, but the truth is that their narrative about the economy doesn't rely on statistics at all.

Today nef is publishing research into how economic debates are framed on both sides of the political spectrum to win support for different policies. Our main finding? The coalition has an economic narrative that is the textbook definition of a powerful political story.They have developed a clear plot, with heroes and villains, and use simple, emotional language to make their point clear.

Repeated with remarkable discipline over several years, their austerity story has gained real traction with the British public. In fact, the polling data we analysed showed that month on month, no matter what people think about the coalition, they continue to believe spending cuts are necessary for the economy.

The story relies on a small set of frames to understand our economy. That austerity is the inevitable price we pay for decades of overspending. That spending cuts are the only medicine for our sick economy. That Britain is broke, hobbled by dangerous debts, and government spending is a bad habit we need to kick. It casts the coalition as its heroes, cleaning up the mess of the last Labour government. George Osborne faithfully retold it on Monday as he reminded us pre-crisis Britain was dependent on state spending and blamed falling living standards on his predecessors.

The government has successfully framed all economic debates on its own terms, but what is most powerful about their narrative is how resilient it is to different circumstances. If the economy is strong the medicine is working, if the economy is weak we need more medicine.

Meanwhile those who oppose the coalition have struggled to find their voice. Challenges to the government's policies tend to rely on academic instead of emotional language. Many fall into the trap of accepting coalition frames (a basic principle cautioned against by framing expert George Lakoff).Very few are rooted in a core story about how the economy works that is simple to understand and retell. That uses memorable visual metaphors, like the maxed out credit card George Osborne refers to when talking about the public finances.

George Osborne may have been right when he said "those in favour of plan B have lost the argument" –rightly or wrongly the austerity story has almost become orthodoxy. But it can still be challenged with another story about what is happening in our economy. One that will resonate with people when growth is low and unemployment is high. That explains why the cost of living is rising and how we can deal with it. That is simple, coherent and emotional, so that it is likely to be retold.

The headlines may have changed, but the story the coalition is telling about the economy is still the same. Opponents of the government should worry less about the growth rate and more about developing their own story about the economy.

Carys Afoko is head of communications at the New Economics Foundation

So long as growth was falling and unemployment was rising, Ed Miliband could comfortably secure victory at PMQs by declaring that David Cameron had failed on the economy. The problem for Miliband and Labour is that the numbers are now moving in the right direction. Economically speaking, there may be little difference between a growing economy and a stagnant one, but politically speaking, there is all the difference in the world.

As a result, it has become much harder for Miliband to discomfort Cameron. Today's session was a wounding one for the Labour leader, with the PM landing blow after blow and Miliband falling back on the old charge of "complacency". Cameron replied, rather effectively, that "real complacency is promising to end boom and bust". Later, Miliband declared that it was George Osborne who "choked off the recovery" in 2010 but if a week is a long time in politics, that is now ancient history. 

Miliband went on to point out that wages had fallen in real terms for 38 of the 39 months that Cameron had been Prime Minister (the one exception being April 2013 when deferred bonuses were paid out to benefit from the cut in the top rate of tax). But the problem for him is that he has yet to clearly explain how Labour would improve living standards. Cameron was able to quote Alistair Darling's remark that he was "waiting to hear" what the party had to say on the economy. The other danger for Labour is that is now not inconceivable that wages could move decisively ahead of prices before the election. 

While at times veering into Flashman mode, Cameron's one-liners meant he had the Tory backbenches behind him today. He declared that Miliband's speeches were "so poor" that "it's hard to know when he's finished" and concluded (in reference to the TUC): "he promised us Raging Bull, he gave us Chicken Run" (a prize to whichever Tory scripted that). 

Miliband's strongest moment came when he referenced Michael Gove's comments on foodbanks ("It's often as a result of some decisions that have been taken by those families which mean that they are not best able to manage their finances.") and asked the coalition frontbench: "have you ever tried living on £150 a week?" But it says much about Cameron's increased confidence, that he didn't even break a sweat. 

Bisi Alimi had trouble getting people to come and talk to me: “When I sent a text about this interview people asked if you’d have a camera or would take their names. Still people wouldn’t turn up. Most of these people are miles from home but you can feel the impact on their lives, even in a liberal country like the UK.”

In the end, only one has shown up: a young man called John* (name changed). He came to England from Nigeria as a student in business management: “I started to think I might be gay when I was 11, in Nigeria. I never discussed it with my family. I discussed it with them when I was in London. They just don’t think that’s what I am. They think I have to be normal, get a girlfriend. It’s a disgrace to them. It’s difficult to change - I enjoyed being gay in England. I’m proud of myself. If I want to go back I have to pretend to be straight. That’s the difficulty with my life.”

It was a meeting with Alimi that helped him: “Bisi welcomed me any time I needed him - always advised me to call him. He’s just always been there for me. He’s also pushed me to speak up: I can be who I want to be.”

It’s now nearly nine years since Alimi made the decision to come out as gay on national Nigerian television: “I’ve talked about it over and over again - it was about wanting to save myself the pain of being outed by an organisation bent on writing falsehood about me - I could either take the power from them or let them write about me in destructive language. It was also about me wanting to break the silence on sexuality. The time was right to stop pretending this doesn’t exist. The backlash was horrendous. It almost cost me my life. I was lucky enough to escape in 2007 and I ran to the UK. I got asylum in 2008 and have been living here since then.”

The guilt of his flight, he says, never leaves him: “My friend David Kato was killed in Uganda, and another friend was killed in Cameroon. They were brave men who could have run. I look back and I say maybe I should have stayed. But he who fights and runs, lives to fight another day. I’m still fighting. I didn’t lose sight of the battle. I’m still involved in the struggle. The Nigerian media won’t talk about this issue without reaching out to me, so I must be doing something worthwhile.”.

Alimi senses a change is coming: “Ten years ago Nigeria didn’t understand sexual orientation and gender identity. Now people are challenging the language and challenging their pastors. There’ll be a time - like in the UK - where gay rights could be a winning ticket for a politician. You forget it was only 40 years ago homosexual acts were decriminalised in the UK - most African countries are only 50 years old. We’re expecting so much from them, despite the fact they’re beclouded by the struggle of colonialisation. Our identity was eroded by years of colonial manipulation - we expect countries to change because there’s social media, American sit coms and British dramas, but it won’t happen overnight.”

From England, Alimi is doing what he can to help recent immigrants: “With time we started to get people who were black British who didn’t recognise themselves as Africans so we changed our name to Black Gay Men’s Initiative. The whole idea was that this was something we wanted for ourselves - not some organised NGO attempting to rescue people. It’s run by everyone who attends the meeting. Even the refreshments involve contributions from members and that’s what matters to me.”

The main aim, he says, is to improve people’s confidence: “I remembered when we started in 2012: there were eight of us: and I remember we were going to take pictures. Half the men didn’t want that. The core of conversation that day was the struggles they were going through with sexuality and identity. The group has grown and the conversation is moving on. I feel like I can share what I feel and get more support from them. It comes back to the issue of confidence because there’s so many intersections. Now you have to keep them quiet.”

In the future, Alimi wants to move beyond the sole issue of homosexuality: “I look forward to a day where there’s a conversation of sexuality and race which takes on this gay group and also lesbian and trans people. I want politicians and policymakers to start developing an interest in issues that affect this population. Our challenge is to talk about sexuality from the black perspective. The question of why you’d want to become a woman or a man - these conversations are hugely influenced by religion. In that context it’s hard to have a rational conversation.”

And Alimi tells me that this influence can make the kind of charitable work he does more difficult: “Most organisations that provide social services for Africans in the UK are religious. A lot of them don’t want to get involved because of religious doctrine - groups are afraid of being involved with the larger picture because of the fear of stigma. We need to engage with people more.”

John seems much less shy when Bisi’s with us: “We’ve gained the confidence to speak - we feel like this is our family,” he says.

To learn more about Bisi Alimi’s initiative, visit http://www.bisialimi.com/

Liberal Democrat president Tim Farron said of Ed Miliband: "I don’t want join in with the Tories who compare him to Kinnock."
Illustration: Nick Hayes

Nick Clegg and his allies have long regarded Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ popular and ambitious president, with suspicion and they have even more reason to do so after my interview with him in tomorrow’s New Statesman.

Tim Farron is speaking at a New Statesman fringe event ‘Endgames: the Lib Dems in the final phase of coalition’ in partnership with the Institute of Government on Monday 16^th September at 6pm at the Liberal Democrat conference in Glasgow. He is also doing an 'in conversation' event in partnership with Santander on Tuesday 17^th September at 6:15pm. 

Life is a never-ending struggle for Roxanna, who looks after disabled son Ahmed. Ahmed, 26, has been at home since his college course ended last year and he is not eligible for a day care centre.

"I have been left to care for my son, no one cares about him," says Roxanna, from Birmingham. "People think Ahmed is mad and that I am cursed. I am not able to work because I can’t leave Ahmed on his own. I only get carers' allowance, Ahmed’s DLA has been cut and he is now on the low rate.

“I am struggling to make ends meet."

This is the situation faced by many families in Britain. Campaign groups say the Asian community is being affected more by the controversial welfare cuts due to the language barrier, mainstream support services not reaching out to them, services not being culturally tailored, and the stigma that remains about disability.

And it could get worse. From October, thousands of disabled people who need to be reassessed for the new Personal Independence Payments (PIP) could have their benefits slashed.

Saghir Alam is a disabilities commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. He says that many Asian families who look after a disabled child are suffering due to a lack of awareness about the help available: “Ethnic minority communities are disproportionately more affected by these cuts because they weren’t accessing these services before and some of these services don’t exist anymore. Sometimes they are not faith wise or culturally sensitive and don’t have the resources to do outreach work. A lot of organisations have got no funding as the budget from the local authority has gone down for project funding.

“I know of a parents group for disabled children in Yorkshire which started two years ago - it took nearly two years to get people on board. After one year they lost their funding.

“We need to sit down with community organisations, carers, parents, and ask them rather than [assume] that services are good.”

Other Asian groups that have lost their funding include EKTA Project, a group for the elderly in London that was created 26 years ago.

Alam’s role involves providing advice to councils and support services on how to engage with different communities. He believes that despite the success of last year’s Paralympic Games in London, it has not had a lasting legacy of changing attitudes towards disabilities: “In the mainstream, disabled people still face barriers. If you have multiple identities like race or faith, you face multiple disadvantages.

“There are still attitudes which are Victorian in the Asian community, so a social model has never been promoted. People don’t want to admit they have children with a disability because in society there is still a negative association with disability.”

Alam adds that some families are losing their benefits after going through assessments due to a language or cultural barrier.

The Work Capability Assessments sparked uproar last year as around 40 per cent of people successfully appealed the decision to deem them fit to work. The coalition government agreed for the Atos firm to carry out the assessments to cut £600 million in overpayments to people who no longer qualify for Employment Support Allowance.

Alam explains: “People may not come to town hall or council offices so you need to use community organisations. Families are too busy caring [for disabled relatives] to do that. I know one or two people who have mental health issues, and they lost their benefits and went to appeal. Stress and autism are words you can't define in Urdu or Punjabi. A lot of terms used in assessments sometimes do not translate.”

Another campaigner critical of mainstream services is Mandy Sanghera, a human rights activist and government adviser. "Many families are continuing to care for their family members because most services do not meet their child's needs, they are not specialised," she says. "Many carers are unaware of what services are out there for their child once they leave school we need better transition into adult services. Due to the cuts, we are pushing desperate families into crisis point. “ 

One disabled person that Sanghera has supported is Jeeta, who has multiple sclerosis and is in a wheelchair. Jeeta, 30, who lives with her parents in an area with no suitable ground floor housing, says: “I want my independence and I don’t want my mum to care for me, she is over protective because of my disability. [But] I don't know where to go for help.”

The extent of the crisis is echoed by Sabina Iqbal, chair and founder of Deaf Parenting UK:“There is a higher prevalence of disability within the Asian Community due to inter-relational marriage within the family. Most of those families are unaware of the impact of the welfare changes due to [the] language barrier and do not have direct access to information through the media. Reaching out to those Asian families is not easy and is often [done] by the local worker who shares information via word of mouth.”

A spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions said Job Centre Plus and councils arrange to meet directly with people affected by going to their homes or arranging a meeting.

On PIP, he said messages are delivered via charities, councils and other stakeholders.

It’s 11.55pm. The big hand is leaning precariously towards the number 12 and it’s time to face the truth; there’s only time for one more Deathmatch before it’s officially tomorrow. You join the match lobby, plug in your headset, and wait for the countdown. For the majority of gamers, sleep is victorious and the selected console is switched off to see another day. As for the rest? They crave one more hit, a hit that never satisfies. Or so say researchers at Cardiff, Derby and Nottingham Trent universities.

Games trick us into impressive periods of screen gazing in order to reach the next must-have achievement, or into defeating that menace: Level 65 of Candy Crush. That’s the whole point. In order for a game to be played, it requires playability. The very reason why we choose to devote time to the PC, Xbox, PlayStation, iPhone or whatever your platform poison, is to be entertained. But can games be too good at their job? The universities’ study, published in July’s issue of Addiction Research and Theory Journalseems to think so, warning online game companies to start taking responsibility to combat a byproduct of their sales – “pathological” addiction. And they’re right, companies do need to flag up the side effects of their success, but not purposefully smother the “addictive” game mechanics.

“Take everything in moderation ... Bring your friends to Azeroth, but don’t forget to go outside of Azeroth with them as well”. The new addition of a welcome message to popular MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), World of Warcraft, is reminiscent of friendly tobacco or alcohol packaging, warning punters from overdosing on the delights within. Likewise, Final Fantasy XI greets its users with a few helpful hints on how to scale the world of Vana without developing real-world travel sickness: “Don’t forget your family, your friends, your school, or your work”. 

Both games are MMORPGs, which, more so than other video game genres boast “an inexhaustible system of goals and success in which the character becomes stronger and richer by moving to new levels.” So far, so safe. Right? But the handy life advice upon entry to these virtual realms doesn’t exist for pure aesthetic value; it does so because of very real circumstances.

The idea of an uncontrollable urge to level-up, a burning need to find the Manslayer of the Qiraji or an overriding concern to hoard piles of ‘gold’ around – and all for a character who exists solely through a computer screen is, on the surface, laughable. Nevertheless, the infinite nature of these worlds and their seemingly limitless gameplay – more so than other game types - has hooked some players into marathon-long sittings. The study records individuals continuing to play 40, 60 and occasionally 90 hours in a single session. That’s enough time to raise some serious parental eyebrows, especially when The American Medical Association predicts that “more than 5 million children” may be fellow addicts.

Game addiction is hardly a new phenomenon. Gambling addicts have been successfully losing their money for centuries, the mechanics of gambling based on a similar premise to MMORPGs. There is no ultimate end goal, but a faint hope of striking lucky spurred on by occasional rewards. What is more problematic is classifying gaming addiction. How many hours of FarmVille do we have to commit to before rewarded with the diagnosis of addict? According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders there is no certified definition for game addiction, but a simple Google search will show you that it isn’t an urban myth. Popular listings include “How to get rid of your game addiction in 15 easy steps” and “Wowaholics Annoymous – a community for suffers from World of Warcraft compulsion.

For most of us, video games can be enjoyed in healthy doses without any real blow to psychological wellbeing – except perhaps a slight sense of guilt that our simulated character is both richer and more skilled than its living counterpart. But the cheerful creed-like messages to “take everything in moderation” is an example of game developers and publishers “tak[ing] some responsibility into their own hands” of potential misuse.

While these cautions should be applauded, as indeed should practical time monitoring tools for players and parents, to alter the entertaining gameplay itself to make it less entertaining is ludicrous. Dr Zaheer Hussain from the University of Derby calls for an amendment of “character development, rapid absorption rate, and multi-player features” to discourage potential addicts. Why purposely manufacture a game to make it less playable? Yes, publishers produce games with the intention of seducing its audience, if they didn’t there would be no gamers to purchase the software in the first place. And what a place would that be. Rather, what is needed is a greater awareness and acceptance of the addictive effects of online games, and a knowledge that Wowaholics Annoymous are there to pick up the pieces.

Barratt Developments, a house building company, has said the recovery in the housing market is spreading outside of London. We answer five questions on Barratt’s comments.

What exactly has Barratt’s said?

In a release announcing the company’s final results for the year ended 30 June 2013, chief executive Mark Clare said:

"We are seeing the housing market recovery starting to spread beyond London and the South East.”

What is the company attributing this to?

An improvement in the mortgage market. Barratt's chairman Bob Lawson said:

"Significant progress has been made on the availability of finance for customers and the mortgage providers' capacity to lend has slowly improved.”

"This has been accelerated by a series of Government mortgage initiatives - FirstBuy, NewBuy and Help to Buy,” he added.

Has the recovering market resulted in them seeing a rise in profit?

Yes, the group reported pre-tax profits for the year to the end of June of £104.8m, up from £100m the previous year.

Its average selling price rose to £194,800 up 7.9 per cent from the previous year's figure of £180,500.

The group has also cut its debt to £25.9m from £167.7m at the end of June 2012.

Does this mean it has plans to build many more houses in the country?

The group said they plan to complete about 45,000 new homes over the next three years.

Has any one else echoed these reports of a spreading housing recovery?

Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) said earlier in the week that there was a pick-up in the market in areas beyond London and the South East of England.

According to the institution the number of homes for sale across the UK increased in August but still did not match demand.

However, The Council of Mortgage Lenders said the pace of housing activity in the country was only "moderate," according to the BBC.

"The UK property market is actually a complex and dynamic patchwork of regional and local conditions in different locations across the UK," the lenders' group told its website.

1. Nick Clegg has served his party well and deserves to survive (Daily Telegraph)

The Lib Dems embody two contradictory factions, one of which may turn on its leader, says Peter Oborne.

2. This crisis resolves little in Syria but says a lot about the United States (Guardian)

The nation is sick and tired of foreign wars, and may never play its role of global anchor again, writes Timothy Garton Ash. We may live to regret it.

3. Take note, Ed Miliband: Starting a fight doesn’t make you strong (Independent)

I cannot understand how inciting fury is in itself an act of good leadership, says Steve Richards.

4. Politicians to blame for BBC infighting (Financial Times)

The UK’s public broadcaster has to be bold or it is pointless, says John Gapper.

5. Let's open our borders to Syria's refugees (Independent)

Britain is one of the world’s wealthiest nations, we should set an example, says Ian Birrell. 

6. Bedroom tax? It's not a policy but the product of a Bad Bullingdon Weekend (Guardian)

Did its devisers imagine a utopia without the UN, judicial review, and the state, asks Zoe Williams. They exist, and ultimately answer to voters.

7. We can’t stop the world, we can’t get off (Times)

Anti-intervention, anti-immigration, anti-aid, writes David Aaronovitch. It’s a fantasy to think we can turn our backs on the planet.

8. The great Liberal Democrat wipeout? I have a hunch it won't happen (Guardian)

Clegg's party may have to fight the equivalent of 57 Eastleighs in 2015 – but they are confident that they can defy the polls, writes Martin Kettle.

The new PM should aim for a smarter state, not radical reform, says an FT editorial.

10. Is the Foreign Office fighting for Britain? (Times)

An open letter to William Hague: your department’s EU review is a whitewash, says John Redwood.

Once a thriving hub of Syria’s oil industry, today Deir Ezzour has become a bleak microcosm of Syria’s conflict. The town, on the banks of the Euphrates River, some 280 miles north-east of the capital, is divided. Half is under the control of Syrian government forces. The other half is in the hands of armed opposition fighters, who also control much of the surrounding areas all the way to the Iraqi border.

Few outsiders make it to this isolated region. No human rights organisations and only a handful of journalists have visited the town. The opposition-controlled section of Deir Ezzour is the only area I can access, as the Syrian government has banned Amnesty and other human rights organisations from areas of the country it controls. The streets are eerily quiet and much of the town is in ruins. Many of the residents have fled. The empty shells of burned and bombed-out buildings line the streets - a testament to the unrelenting air strikes, artillery, mortar and tank shelling by President Bashar al-Assad’s troops.

The only way in or out of Deir Ezzour is across a bridge which regularly comes under sniper fire from government forces. There is, unsurprisingly, little traffic. A few taxis ferry residents back and forth, driving at breakneck speed to dodge the bullets. Those who dare to cross - civilians and fighters alike - are often killed or injured in the process. Within two hours of my arrival in the town, I am at a local hospital, where the reality of that risk strikes home. A young man has been shot while crossing the bridge. He is pronounced dead almost immediately. He never stood a chance; a large-calibre bullet had left a gaping wound in his head. Everyone I meet has lost relatives and friends, many in the constant indiscriminate bombardments, while others have been summarily executed.

Abd al-Wahed Hantush, a 38-year-old firefighter, tells me how he lost six members of his family last October. His mother, wife and two children were killed when their car came under fire as they tried to cross from a government-controlled area back to the other side of town. His brother and sister-in-law were also killed in the incident, along with dozens of other civilians. “They had gone to visit my sister in the al-Jura district of the city, which is under the control of government forces,” Abd al-Wahed says. “There was no way back except through the hills on the outskirts of the city. There are often government soldiers in that area, but it was the only way.”

They never made it back. Their bodies - slaughtered and half-burned - were discovered the following day. Abd al-Wahed’s eyes well up with tears as he shows me photographs of his five-year-old daughter, Sham, and his three-year-old son, Abderrahman, on his mobile phone. “They were all I had; I’ve lost everything,” he said.

Abd al-Wahed has cuts and burns on his face, neck, chest and arms. Four days earlier he had gone to put out a fire in a house which was hit by a rocket. “When I got there another rocket fell and exploded very near where I was,” he says. He’s lucky to be alive. Two more rockets struck the area soon afterwards.

Rockets and shells pound Deir Ezzour day and night, smashing into residential buildings or landing in the streets. For the civilians left in town there’s little they can do to keep safe. The nights are punctuated by the thumping sound of incoming artillery, and occasionally the sound of outgoing mortars fired by the armed opposition groups reverberates across the town. Everywhere, fragments of the Grad rockets fired by government forces from a hill overlooking the town litter the ground.

I visit a family with two small children who are now living in their shop in the basement of a building. “There is shelling all the time but sometimes it is unbearable. During the week of 23 May it was relentless. Batteries of 12 rockets would land in quick succession. It went on at that pace for two weeks; it was impossible to go out even to get bread,” the children’s father explained. “We avoid going out as far as we can; here we are a bit protected.” Few families have a basement in which to shelter.

Meanwhile, a children’s playground in one corner of the town has been converted into a cemetery. Tombstones surround the colourful slides, no longer in use as children are now kept indoors. Some of the graves belong to children who used to play there. In one corner of the deserted playground is a particularly well-tended grave. It belongs to 11-year-old Ahmad Karjusli, who was killed on 19 October last year. Local residents tell me that the child’s mother spends every afternoon by his grave. Later that day, I find her there - alone and crying. Her mobile phone lay on the grave mound playing religious music.

“I only had two children and Ahmad was my youngest, my darling,” she tells me. “He was such a good boy. My life is empty without him. Why was he taken from me? I cannot bear the pain.” She shows me photographs of him on her mobile phone; he looks very much like his mum. Ahmad was standing by his own front door along with a four-year-old neighbour, Abderrahman Rayyash, when a shell landed in the street and killed them both.

As has happened all too often in the Syrian conflict, it is civilians who have borne the brunt of the spiralling violence. In Deir Ezzour, as elsewhere, the suffering is also hardening feeling among a civilian population who feel increasingly abandoned by the rest of the world.  When I mentioned to townspeople that I wanted to investigate sectarian violence allegedly carried out by armed opposition groups in the nearby town of Hatla (like Deir Ezzour, Hatla is predominantly Sunni Muslim) some expressed disapproval and others discouraged me from going. Many were distinctly unsympathetic to the plight of their Shi’a neighbours and others worried that what I would discover could tarnish the image of the Syrian uprising.

Pain, loss and anger can make people blind or indifferent to the suffering of others. This is something I have come across all too often in the many conflicts and wars I’ve worked on over the years and Syria is no different. The longer this increasingly brutal conflict goes on, the greater the damage will be to the very fabric of Syrian society - and the harder it will be for the wounds of this conflict to heal.

The Liberal Democrat president Tim Farron said of Ed Miliband:
"I don’t want join in with the Tories who compare him to Kinnock."
Illustration: Nick Hayes

Enter Tim Farron’s Westminster office and the first thing you notice is a giant wall planner on which the words “presidential visit” repeatedly appear. They are, I realise, a reference not to Barack Obama but to Farron’s upcoming election battleground speeches. You might suppress a laugh at the thought of hard-pressed Liberal Democrat candidates greeting the decidedly unflashy Farron as “Mr President”, yet it is a reminder of his unique status in British politics. As the party’s directly elected president, Farron has a personal mandate from party members and at the same time, as a non-minister, he remains unbound by collective responsibility. To the undoubted relief of David Cameron and Ed Miliband, there is no equivalent in either Labour or the Conservatives.

Since the formation of the coalition government, Farron has defied the party whip on tuition fees, the NHS bill and secret courts. The MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale did so again on Syria, the subject to which we turn once his long-serving aide Paul Butters has brought him a cup of tea. Why did he abstain from the vote in parliament, rather than oppose the motion outright?

“What I expected when I talked to Nick [Clegg] on the Tuesday and what I expected us to be asked to vote on would be something that would be a rush to military action,” Farron says. “I spent the best part of 48 hours pleading with Nick that we ought to go through the UN, that there should be no immediate rush to military intervention, not least because we need to have as much evidence as is humanly possible . . .

“The thing is, when you see the motion that ended up before the House, I’d got all the things I’d asked for and there was no rush to military action; there was the UK-led attempt to go through the UN. And I felt that, having got what I wanted, it would be a bit churlish to vote against.”

He adds, however, that had there been a second vote, he would have opposed military action. “I made it very clear that if it was a call to intervene militarily, I would have voted against. If the vote had been won and we’d been back here voting on action this week, I’d have been in the No lobby.”

 We are meeting shortly before the start of what is the most important Liberal Democrat conference since the party entered government. In Glasgow, MPs and activists will vote on which policies to include in the party’s 2015 manifesto. Clegg aims to use the occasion to complete the Lib Dems’ transformation into a grown-up “party of government” by inviting members to endorse the policies pursued by the coalition: an aggressive austerity programme, a reduced top rate of income tax and tuition fees of £9,000. Like a student who returns home from university and tears down his Che Guevara posters before embarking on a respectable career in the City, Clegg wants the party to put away childish things. He is determined that the Lib Dems will enter the next election unencumbered by unwisely made pledges such as the one on tuition fees.

The fear among activists is that the result will be a bland, centrist document seemingly crafted with a second Conservative-Lib Dem coalition in mind. It is a concern shared by Farron. “The most important thing from our perspective – and I’m a member of the manifesto group – is that we ensure that our manifesto is 100 per cent Liberal Democrat. You don’t pre-concede on things. So if we think the Tories wouldn’t accept putting the top rate of tax back up to 50p but we want to, then we stick it in there and we negotiate from that point.” Though Farron avoids mentioning Clegg by name, he tells me: “There’s a danger that some people in the party might think we should concede and maybe write bits of our manifesto on the basis of what we think other parties would accept, rather than on the basis of what we want to achieve.”

 The question of what the Lib Dems want to achieve is equally divisive. Asked recently about the possibility of pledging to restore the 50p rate of tax, David Laws, the schools minister and a close ally of Clegg, warned against policies that raise little revenue and are “just symbols”. Farron turns this logic on its head. “My view is that we should have that in our manifesto and while it raises an amount of money, it’s also a really important statement that we are all in it together.”

In the case of tuition fees, he similarly argues that the party should not settle for the status quo. “I would personally like to see fees abolished and replaced with a graduate contribution system purely based on ability to pay.” The manifesto, he says, should call for “movement towards a more progressive system”.

Farron, aged 43, was elected to parliament in 2005 in his Cumbrian seat by a margin of just 267 votes. By campaigning relentlessly in the five years that followed, he expanded his support to the point where he now enjoys a nuclear-proof majority of 12,264. As party president and the standard-bearer of the Lib Dem left, he has made it his mission to win back the millions of progressive-minded voters who have deserted the party since the election in 2010. While Farron would never describe any voter as lost, Clegg seems to regard the Lib Dems’ former supporters with something close to contempt. He remarked last year: “There are a group of people who don’t like any government in power and are always going to shout betrayal. We have lost them and they are not going to come back by 2015. Our job is not to look mournfully in the rear-view mirror and hope that somehow we will claw them back. Some of them basically seem to regard Liberal Democrats in coalition as a mortal sin.”

When I ask Farron whether he agrees, he bluntly replies: “The people who are most likely to vote for you next time are the people who voted for you last time . . . You don’t write people off; they’re there to be persuaded to come back or, rather, stay with us.”

He emphasises the need for greater differentiation between the Lib Dems and the Tories “on issues like housing, on issues like support for the public sector and those who work in it, and on fair taxation”. In an unprompted swipe at Michael Gove, he tells me that the Education Secretary is “completely wrong if he thinks that the way to deal with the age-old problem of the fact that Britain doesn’t always compete as well when it comes to educational outcomes as our European neighbours is to just berate the teaching profession. The chances are that it’s British political culture and class culture that are the reasons why we’re behind other European countries and always have been.”

Farron is often pejoratively likened to a student politician (he served as the president of the Newcastle University Students’ Union in 1991), an image enhanced by the Dr Martens he wears. A popular joke among Clegg’s allies runs, “What does Tim Farron want to be when he grows up? Simon Hughes” – a reference to the party’s left-leaning and anguished deputy leader. In reality, Farron’s ambition, popularity among grass-roots activists and impeccable voting record mark him out as a top contender for the party leadership when a vacancy next arises. Will he stand? “I honestly don’t know. It could be many, many years off. I’m not even remotely focusing on it.” To decode: his leadership ambitions have been postponed, rather than abandoned.

As another hung parliament looks increasingly likely in 2015, I ask Farron whether he would rather ally with Labour or the Conservatives, to which he offers the default Lib Dem response: “The electorate will decide who’s in power.” But he speaks with warmth about Miliband. While critical of the Labour leader’s conduct over Syria (“He changed his mind half a dozen times in 48 hours”), he quickly qualifies his remarks by saying, “I really like Ed Miliband, so I don’t want to diss him. I don’t want to join in with the Tories who compare him to [Neil] Kinnock.”

He continues: “First of all, he’s a polite and nice person. He is somebody who is genuinely of the Robin Cook wing of the Labour Party – from their perspective, what you’d call ‘the soft left’. Somebody who is not a Luddite on environmental issues, somebody who’s openminded about modernising our democracy, somebody who’s instinctively a bit more pluralistic than most Labour leaders and a bit more internationalist as well.”

I wait for a “but”, only for Farron to say: “And there are other things, too. For all that I think he could have done a lot more on the AV campaign, he did at least have the backbone to come out and back it.”

He adds mischievously: “He wouldn’t share a platform with Nick [Clegg], so he ended up with me, poor thing. I like the guy.”

Could a Miliband-Farron coalition government be the future of British politics? Should Labour become the largest party in another hung parliament in 2015 and call for the removal of Clegg, just as the Lib Dem leader demanded that Gordon Brown stand down, it would be far from unthinkable. Even though Clegg seeks to remake the Lib Dems as an economically liberal party, instinctively closer to the Tories than to Labour, Farron holds out the alternative of an unambiguously centreleft party, at one with Miliband on issues such as the 50p tax rate and tuition fees.

Before the 2010 election, Cameron memorably – to his later embarrassment – named Clegg as his “favourite joke”. Should Miliband fall short of a majority in 2015 and look to the Lib Dems for allies, many may yet be forced similarly to revise their opinion of Farron.