What Nick Clegg just told us about student fees

In questions at the Lib Dem conference yesterday, Nick Clegg sounded extremely sure about where the debate is going on fees for undergraduate tuition. He said that abolishing fees would cost about £12.5 billion over the course of a parliament and that the only issue was over affordability.

"The only question is over when we can afford to scrap tuition fees," he said.

He was very deliberate, very precise. It wasn't a matter of if or how but merely of when. He sounded to me like a man who is confident that the coalition's eventual policy will allow him to hold true to this line. This suggests he has at least an understanding with David Cameron over the shape of the policy approach to come, even if numbers and timings are currently missing. But I confess I'm baffled as to what Clegg's words yesterday really signify.

Clegg's language is more or less the same as he was using before the election. An important difference is that then he was outlining ways in which fees could be gradually removed over six years. That timescale was missing yesterday, which Clegg highlighted.

The thing that baflles me is how Clegg is going to deliver on this promise in a way that doesn't ring achingly hollow. Why would the Conservatives hand a huge hoard of precious cash over to the Lib Dems for a victory that would be indelibly remembered as a Clegg victory rather than a Cameron victory?

And Clegg didn't use the word "progressive" that Vince Cable always does when talking about this. Evan Harris earlier this week wrote about the "progressive wing" of the Lib Dems for what seems to have been the first time, suggesting both that political differences within the party are crystallising and that it is the non-progressives (ie Clegg and co) who are in charge.

Ideas anyone on what policy could make sense of what Clegg is saying?