David Heath, Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, was taped saying Chancellor George Osborne had the “capacity to get up one’s nose” while local government minister Andrew Stunell cast doubt on the sincerity of Prime Minister David Cameron.
The recordings were the latest made by undercover journalists working for the Daily Telegraph newspaper posing as constituents of Liberal Democrat MPs.
Earlier this week, senior Lib Dem and Business Secretary Vince Cable was stripped of some regulatory powers after saying he was “declaring war” on News Corp Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch.
Other Lib Dem ministers have criticized government policy and said they strongly disagreed with some proposals.
In Thursday’s reported exchanges, Heath said: “George Osborne has the capacity to get up one’s nose, doesn’t he? I mean, what I think is, some of them just have no experience of how ordinary people live, and that’s what worries me.”
Transport minister Norman Baker said his party played Conservatives “off against each other” and compared the Lib Dems to anti-apartheid campaigners in South Africa who tried to fight the system from within.
“I don’t like George Osborne very much,” he said.
Stunell reportedly said he did not know where to place Cameron on the “sincerity monitor” while care minister Paul Burstow was said to have commented: “I don’t want you to trust David Cameron ... in the sense you believe he’s suddenly become a cuddly Liberal. Well, he hasn’t.”
Burstow said he was embarrassed by the comments and had not meant any offense, and he did trust the prime minister.
“What I was trying to say ... was when you join a coalition you don’t merge into a single party, you still retain the separate identities,” he told BBC TV.
Meanwhile, one Lib Dem MP, Adrian Sanders, openly criticized his party’s leadership in a blog on his website for failing to make clear what the party had achieved in government.
“We have a leadership that seems keener on impressing the Conservatives as to how much we can be relied upon to take `tough’ decisions, than on asserting how much the Conservatives need us in order to remain in government,” he wrote.
Labour leader Ed Miliband argued that the Telegraph’s revelations showed that the Liberal Democrats were just passengers in a “sham” coalition, propping up the Conservative-led administration.
However, while the recordings have been embarrassing for both coalition partners, Cameron has dismissed any suggestion of lasting damage.
“Of course, coalitions do have their difficulties, coalitions do have tensions, even contradictions, that is a fact,” Cameron told reporters on Wednesday.
