Tim Farron is showing some leg to Labour again this morning, committing to withdrawing the LibDems’ support for the spare room subsidy cut. In a speech to the Centre for Social Justice that could have easily been cobbled together from old Labour Party press releases, Farron will say:

“The onslaught of divisive rhetoric that demonises the poor can never help us to create a fairer society. The bedroom tax causes huge social problems and distorts the market – we as a party cannot support this.”

Farron needs to get his Labour-friendly rhetoric up to date, these days they admit the bedroom ‘tax’ is not really a tax. And does the welfare transfer cause “huge social problems” as Farron claims? The number of evictions caused by the spare room subsidy is tiny, there is evidence it is nudging people into work, it is bringing empty homes back into use and it is saving up to a million pounds a day. But why let the evidence get in the way of another chance to position yourself for 2015…