LibDem newspaper full of misinformation and lies, says LibDem minister

Well, that looks like the end of a beautiful friendship.

"Stop reading the Guardian. It is a carrier of misinformation and lies", the previously almost unknown LibDem health minister Paul Burstow told the Liberal Democrat conference, as Michael Crick notes.

Well, he'll probably have managed to get his name in the paper tomorrow - and maybe some further scrutiny of the massive NHS reorganisation he is backing too.

Though, in the days before the New Politics, government ministers telling party members which newspapers to read would have been considered a smidge illiberal.

Perhaps the liberal moment has come and gone already, only a few months after the LibDems secured their first General Election national newspaper endorsement for decades with The Guardian's heartfelt endorsement.

Perhaps there will be some rowing back from the party very quickly this afternoon. Unless the LibDem frontbench has been briefed to ensure that Guardian journalists and readers are pretty clear when they hear about Nick Clegg's disavowal of liberal-lefties disillusioned with Labour ... he means them.

Though the Guardian newspaper always remained suspiciously Old Thinking from a Cleggmaniac perspective, as even its LibDem-backing editorial was stuck in old Lib-Lab thinking that:

"the cause of reform is overwhelmingly more likely to be achieved by a Lib Dem partnership of principle with Labour than by a Lib Dem marriage of convenience with a Tory party".

Perhaps the LibDems might wonder if The Guardian's support was ever worth that much anyway, after it failed to help them overturn even a majority under 500 last May in the Guardianista heartlands of Islington South.

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UPDATE:

Channel 4's Gary Gibbon has more anti-Guardianista angst from the new party of power:

You hear a lot of anti-Guardian stuff around here. The Guardian swung behind the Lib Dems in the election but has been pretty critical of the Coalition.

Nick Clegg attended The Guardian’s reception at the Conference last night but makes little secret of how annoyed he is by the paper’s attacks. He’s even been heard to refer to it as “The Poison.”

While the newspaper's Jonathan Freedland tweeted of Burstow's attack

Almost makes me nostalgic: Lib Dem minister attacking the Guardian. Labour were just the same in 1997-8.