While following a live broadcast of the Liberal Democrats policy conference earlier today, I was surprised to hear the name of Malta cropping up in the middle of one of the key speeches. Chris Huhne, one of the four leadership contenders addressing party activists, was making a case in favour of government policy decentralisation. He repeated a comment that he had already made in another speech last November:

Only one country in the EU is more centralised than Britain, and that is Malta where 100 per cent of tax revenue goes through central government. But Malta has a population only a little larger than Southampton

This time, Huhne compared Malta's size to the London borough of Croydon instead of Southampton and it was the only point of his sober speech which generated laughter from the audience.

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