Lib Dem HQ staff have been told that because of a £700,000 hole in their budget they will need to make 20 people redundant by the end of November (out of a staff of 80). Every party staff member has been given the option of voluntary redundancy, though they will have to move to compulsory ones if needed.

The £700,000 shortfall is from membership renewal income – they were told that it was because of an error in projections. Guido’s source is incredulous, “if it is an error then it’s an absolutely enormous one and I don’t believe it’s possible to be that wrong. Could very well be that members are just not renewing at anything like the rate they used to.” So much for membership surging on the back of anti-Brexit campaigning…

According to the same source “The cherry on the s**it-cake is that Vince has flown to Scotland today, business class, to campaign, with the party footing the bill…” If only the low-energy Cable spent some of his time fundraising he might not be sacking so many campaign staff…

UPDATE: Senior party insiders are hanging the blame on CEO Nick Harvey. The former MP they say is fine on political strategy, not so good on operational management. Party income is now projected to be down by 10% overall – which would not justify 25% staffing cuts – the problem is the shortfall was not expected, quite the contrary. Staff numbers had been expanded on the back of over-optimistic projections. The party centrally is at it’s debt limit and overdrawn to the tune of £1 million. Even Keynesians like Cable know you can’t keep on borrowing for ever…

UPDATE II: The Lib Dems have strenuously denied the suggestion that Cable flew business class to Scotland this week.