Analysis By Nick Assinder Political correspondent, BBC News website

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell wanted to mark his first anniversary in the job with a conference underpinning his leadership and setting the party clear, ambitious new goals.

Sir Menzies fired speculation over deals

After a long weekend in Harrogate, he ended up with confusion over his intentions towards both post-election deals with the other parties and over voting reform, the most sacred of party cows.

There were signs of serious tensions on his frontbench as right-leaning MPs feared he was planning a possible deal with Labour to keep the Tories out of power.

The left were worried he appeared to have abandoned the demand for proportional representation to be introduced for Westminster elections, although they may have been relieved to hear suggestions he would do no deals with the Tories.

And there were those on all sides who seemed to think Sir Menzies was moving the party back to the days of the last leader-but-one, and his close ally, Paddy Ashdown, and his strategy of partnership with the Labour government that might even have seen Lib Dems in the cabinet.

In other words, after 12 months of deliberately refusing to speculate or encourage talk about post-election deals with any party, it was believed the cat had been let out of the bag.

Counter briefings

There was plenty of evidence in Sir Menzies' big speech that he was ready to join some sort of understanding with a Labour government in the even of a hung parliament.

He set five tests for Gordon Brown to meet to prove he was the man to lead Britain, he ridiculed David Cameron and he declared: "I tell you this now. I'm not content to lead a party whose sole purpose is opposition. Our clear direction must be government."

Sir Menzies set five tests for Gordon Brown as prime minister

Had it stayed at that it would have stirred plenty of speculation, but no more, over his future intentions.

It was the briefings and counter briefings after the event that did the damage - first with a senior party source encouraging the view that the speech was the "first signal" Sir Menzies would be interested in talking to Labour about a deal if the Lib Dems held the balance of power.

But that suggestion was slapped down by Sir Menzies' chief of staff, Ed Davey, who said that briefing had been unauthorised, and wrong.

"The tests Ming set for Brown were about his likely government in a few months' time and not about some post-election situation," was how he put it.

Hung parliament

All this comes against a background of continuing rumblings over Sir Menzies' leadership and age, talk of right-wing party members being wooed by David Cameron and polls suggesting the Tories are making gains at the expense of the Lib Dems who appear stalled.

One poll during the conference even suggested voters would prefer ousted leader Charles Kennedy over Sir Menzies.

Party allies pointed out that it takes a General Election campaign for voters to get to know a Lib Dem leader, and that Sir Menzies had asserted his authority to win a notable victory on Trident policy.

That Trident victory was just the sort of thing Sir Menzies was hoping would bury all the chatter about his leadership at the Harrogate conference.

Equally, though, he needed to answer all those questions about what he would do in the event of a hung parliament - seen as a real possibility after the next election - with the Lib Dems holding the balance of power.

The danger, judging by the media coverage of the weekend, was that he may have succeeded too well on the second, and a result not quite achieved the first.