THERE must be a limit to Nick Clegg's chutzpah, but, judging by his breathtaking comments at the Liberal Democrats' manifesto launch, he hasn't reached it yet.

He is intent on presenting whatever depleted band of MPs his party has on May 8 as a coalition partner for either Ed Miliband or David Cameron.

"The Liberal Democrats will add a heart to a Conservative government and we will add a brain to a Labour one," he quipped condescendingly.

Clegg warned that, if Labour and the Tories allied themselves with the SNP or Ukip, this would mean "a government lurching off to the extremes."

The working class needs no lectures on extremism from the Liberal Democrats.

We have endured five years of class warfare designed to drive down living standards for people in work, on benefits or retired.

Clegg's MPs have been enthusiastic participants in this single-minded campaign to make the working class pay the costs of the economic crisis precipitated by the private banking sector.

They trooped into the voting lobbies to treble tuition fees to £9,000 a year, backed the bedroom tax, supported a rise in VAT to 20 per cent and slashed income tax for the highest-paid from 50 per cent to 45 per cent.

Despite constant chatter about favouring a mansion tax on properties valued at over £2 million, Liberal Democrat MPs united with their fellow conservatives to vote down a Labour motion proposing precisely that.

Fellow conservatives? Certainly. While willing to accept Cabinet posts from either Cameron or Miliband, Clegg's chameleons have shown a clear preference for the Bullingdon boy.

Not only does the Liberal Democrat leader constantly refer to "finishing the job" that he and Cameron have started but local leaflets issued by his party leave no doubt.

"Your vote could keep the keys to Number 10 out of his hands," reads a leaflet issued by Cardiff Central Liberal Democrats alongside a picture of Miliband.

Clegg's party is desperate to emulate the example of its German neoliberal equivalent, the Free Democrats.

Between 1949 and 2013, the Free Democrats were the coalition partners of the Christian Democrats for 32 years and of the Social Democrats for 13.

No-one wanted them, but they were always there. Alas for this voting fodder for hire, the Free Democrats failed to win a single seat in the Bundestag in 2013.

This is unlikely to be the Liberal Democrats' fate next month, but, if Labour should need to call on outside assistance to form a government, the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens would all be far more preferable as partners than Clegg's conservative cronies.

Green Party leader Natalie Bennett's firm commitment to returning our railways to public ownership sets a principled example to Labour, which has been all over the place on this issue.

Shadow transport secretary Michael Dugher told the TSSA rail union journal last month that "privatisation was a disaster."

He said that he wanted "to see a public sector operator able to take on and challenge the private train operating companies."

And Dugher added: "The truth is that the franchising model as it stands today has got to go."

The only unanswered question after these comments is, what stands in the way of an unequivocal statement that Labour supports a return to public ownership?

It's electorally popular, attractive to potential partners and it would signal clear red water between the current conservative coalition and an incoming Labour government.