Ashdown would join a Labour Cabinet

Paddy Ashdown, the Liberal Democrat leader, said yesterday he would accept a Cabinet post in a Labour government if it expanded nursery education, reformed the constitution and played a full part in Europe.

Responding to one of hisMPs, David Alton, who accused him of "surrendering the independence of his party for ...ministerial office", Mr Ashdown said on BBC TV: "Surely ... we can now find a system ... where if we agree with another party we're prepared to say, 'I agree with you about that' and work together in the interests of the nation."

Mr Alton, who is standing down at the election, wrote in the Express on Sunday that Mr Ashdown's policy of dialogue with Labour was hitting the LibDems in opinion polls and sapping their strength in key areas.

But Mr Ashdown said Tony Blair, the Labour leader, "may be" like him in wanting to get rid of the "destructive tribalism in British politics" and it made sense to work with him for things in the national interest.

Mr Ashdown did not rule out taking a Cabinet seat in a Labour-led government but the important question was: "To do what? If you say would I like to be a Cabinet minister in a government that was going to take Britain out of Europe, that wasn't going to invest in education, wasn't going to bring our rotten, stinking political system into line with the modern age, the answer is 'No, of course not'.

"But if it is to begin to invest in people, to deliver nursery education to every two-year-old [sic], to reform and modernise our constitution to have Britain play a full part in Europe, of course I want to work with others to achieve that - across the floor of the House of Commons or with them." To Mr Alton's accusation that he was selling out for personal ambition, he said he was "ambitious for what I know this nation can achieve; I'm ambitious for my party."

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