Who are these mysterious “Senior Liberal Democrats”?

Those mysterious people, ‘Senior Liberal Democrats’, have been at it again, according to yesterday’s London Evening Standard:

Senior Liberal Democrats want Nick Clegg’s stance on Europe to shift, amid fears that voters will believe him unwilling to offer an in-out referendum on EU membership.

The group warns there is a danger Lib-Dems will be portrayed as not trusting the British public to make a decision on Europe. They say the Conservative Party has stolen a march in painting themselves as the only party wanting a vote on leaving the EU.

A Lib-Dem source said: “The Tories are saying they are the only party offering a referendum and that we don’t want to give people a choice. The danger is the charge will stick.

Who are these “Senior Liberal Democrats”? The Standard describes them as a “group”, then a “Lib-Dem source”. But we are given no clue about the provenance or authority of this source and therefore its credence.

However, the fact that the story rapidly retreats from the plural (“Senior Liberal Democrats” and “group”) to the singular (“a Lib-Dem source”) suggests that this is just one person, and a self-serving and cowardly one at that.

Whoever it is, this self-important “source” should either come out into the open or shut the fuck up.

Postscript: A clue to the anonymous “source” is the news on Liberal Democrat Voice that, with respect to Tory MP James Wharton’s private member’s bill on an EU referendum, “the Lib Dem parliamentary party will decide its position in a couple of weeks’ time”. My money’s on a Liberal Democrat MP who wants to scare his colleagues into supporting Wharton’s bill. Whoever it is obviously hasn’t the balls to express that view publicly.