Nick Clegg tells Lib Dems to be realistic in government Where do we go now? Clegg says Lib Dems need to choose which direction they wish to go. The Liberal Democrats must become a "fully-fledged party of government" or risk being condemned to irrelevance and slow decline, Nick Clegg has warned. The deputy prime minister said the Lib Dems were at a "very real fork in the road" and had to choose whether to embrace their position in power or retreat to the "comfort blanket of opposition." In a speech to the party's councillors in Manchester, he said the next Liberal Democrat general election manifesto would spell out the party's red lines for any coalition negotiations. The document will be a starting point for talks with political rivals, and Clegg warned activists that they should not expect to implement everything in it. The prospectus will clearly show the commitments that the Lib Dems would "die in a ditch" to keep in a power-sharing deal, aides to Clegg said. The Lib Dem leader acknowledged that the party's pledge to scrap tuition fees had been a mistake because it could not be delivered in coalition but the next manifesto, drawn up by Cabinet Office minister David Laws, would be a to-do list, not a flight of fancy. In a keynote speech, Clegg acknowledged the Lib Dems had taken a hit following the decision to enter coalition with the Conservatives in 2010, but he insisted the party had to position itself as a party of government. Our party needs to make some big changes to the way we do things. The way we deploy our message; how we design our policies. Let's just be absolutely clear on the alternative. Governing has carried a cost. We have taken a hit; our opponents try to use the fact we are in government nationally against us locally. [But] if we try and turn back the clock, hankering for the comfort blanket of national opposition, seeking to airbrush out the difficult decisions we have had to take, we condemn our party to the worst possible fate: irrelevance; impotence; slow decline. Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman said Clegg's suggestion that the Lib Dems had red-line issues they would not abandon was laughable. She said: "Everyone knows his promises aren't worth the paper they're written on. Before the last election he led the Lib Dem campaign against a VAT rise and promised to oppose tuition fee rises. But after the election he did the exact opposite.