CommentIsLinked@LDV: Nick Clegg – ‘Politics is broken’

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CommentIsLinked@LDV: Nick Clegg – ‘Politics is broken’

By The Voice | Wed 17th December 2008 - 2:25 pm

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Over on the New Statesman website yesterday, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg wrote about what is going to keep him busy in the next twelve months. Read it in full here, but here’s an excerpt to whet your appetite:

I have never tried to hide my despair of Westminster. People in this country are governed by processes that feel totally alien to their lives; by the puerile and archaic pantomime that so often dictates the Commons; by a system that keeps power hoarded up in Whitehall.

Our politics is broken. It isn’t just our economy that’s in tatters, or as the Prime Minister would insist, the global economy that’s the problem. And the source of our woes isn’t that our society is bust – a Conservative mantra I find particularly grating. This country is full of people who support those around them and who care about the communities they live in.

It’s true that we need to reach out to the groups and individuals who are being left behind, and who feel alienated as a result. And it’s true that we now need to rebuild our economy. But we won’t manage either until we overhaul the way we do politics.

Read more by The Voice .
This entry was posted in LibLink.

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One Comment

Letterman 17th Dec '08 - 10:08pm

Our politicians are finding a lot of broken stuff around at the moment: society, the economy and now politics? Who’s going around breaking all this stuff? I blame everybody else!

P.S. Did anyone notice that Jackie Smith launched the new ID card scheme for foreign nationals today in Sheffield? (where Nick Clegg is an MP) If that’s not playing politics I don’t know what is.

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