My Grandfather, a miner and socialist of the Dennis Skinner ilk, was always keen to tell me, “Never trust the Liberals son. At least you know where you stand with the Tories”. He meant that Conservatives, though dreadful, were predictable while the Liberals were anything but. What Granddad would have made of David Cameron I can’t imagine.

The more contact I had with Liberals the more difficulty I had understanding what made them tick. So I asked one of them, an affable and amusing County Council colleague, “I don’t understand how your party works?”

“That’s because we’re not a party – we’re a loose collection of individuals with our own agenda, or not”, he replied.

I guess it makes sense too. If your first principle is the freedom and rights of the individual, then it isn’t surprising that party discipline, whips and the like don’t sit easily. And it’s also why Labour and Tory souls who take that stuff for granted find it so infuriatingly difficult to read the Liberal’s next move.

In the current Council election here in Reading the Liberal Democrats, whether they gain seats, lose seats or most likely both, stand a chance of ending up with some influence. What kind of influence it is almost impossible to tell.

One of the difficulties of being a Liberal Democrat is that in order to win seats you need to position yourself against one or other of the major parties. This is necessary to gather ‘tactical’ votes on the ‘you dislike the other lot more than you dislike us, so vote for us to get rid of them’ principle. That often means Liberals face in different directions in different parts of the same town – another thing that drives both Conservative and Labour stalwarts into apoplexy.

In Reading fathoming just where the Liberals will end up is even more difficult because their long-standing leader Bob Green is calling it a day. Councillor Green, who came into local politics after a civil service career – and so had the distinct advantage of understanding how public services worked, has been a credit to his party and the Council as a whole. Like the rest of us Bob had to play the party political game, but he did it with humour, without pomposity, with balance but, unusually for a Liberal, with consistency. Reading politics will be poorer without him.

Of course Liberal Democrat candidates will now be sharpening their pencils (ink would too firm a commitment) to tell Post readers that they have lots and lots of really good policies. Of course they do! But manifestos put together in the certain knowledge that you won’t have the power to implement them are meaningless.

So what will happen after 1st May if, as many expect, Reading Borough Council ends up with no overall majority for either Labour or the Conservatives? The most likely outcome is that after a lot of bluster, talks in corridors, whispers and gossip an anti-climactic Annual Meeting of the Council will see the Liberal Democrats sitting on their hands and allowing whoever is the largest party to take cabinet seats. Whoever is the second party will force the meeting to vote so that they can denounce the treachery of the infernal Liberals to anyone who cares to listen.

Anything else would require the Liberal Democrats to nail their colours to the mast – which wouldn’t suit their leader presumptive, Gareth Epps, who is also their general election candidate. This is way what’s best for Reading Borough Council – a stable administration for the next two years – is likely to trail behind party political interest in the considerations of the post Bob Green Liberal Democrats.