Nick Clegg’s latest ‘Meets You’ public meeting – in which he gets out of Westminster and meets real people across the UK – comes to Oxford tonight. I’m going to be live-tweeting the event over @libdemvoice – just click here to keep up with what Nick’s asked and what he says.
Share:at Wesley Methodist Church, Oxford, waiting for Nick to speak. Couple of hundred people here.
a rather bedraggled-looking – well, it is raining – Evan Harris (MP for Oxford West) has just arrived.
Steve Goddard (candidate for Oxford East) introducing Nick, looking forward to overturning Labour’s 963 majority.
Nick takes to the floor, thanks the audience (including the students missing Hollyoaks on telly)
Nick: these meetings my attempt to break the top-down stranglehold of Westminster arrogance
first question – will Nick go vegan to help tackle climate change? (Is eating meatballs for supper after event, so no).
2nd question – pupil premium – how will it help kids from disadvantaged backgrounds?
Nick – LDs will equalise funding between poorest kids and kids at fee-paying schools.
3rd question – is this a police state? Nick – no, but deeply, deeply illiberal.
4th question – views on digital piracy. Nick – intention to commit crime crucial – cutting off offendors won’t work
5th question – hung P’ment – who would LDs support. All parties would have to think how to respond. LD job to work out liberal priorities ..
.. and campaign for liberal priorities in opposition or in government
6th question – Afghanistan. Nick: we’re right to be there, but complete vacuum where strategy should be.
Nick: article in Times tomorrow on what his Afghanistan strategy would be.
7th question – home schooling. Classis liberal dilemma: state duties to kids vs parents’ rights. No decision yet, tho, on how to vote.
8th question – Iran. Nick: support reformists in Iran, and multi-lateral pressure from nations.
9th question – how to restore MPs’ pride in serving the people. Nick: commercialisation of politics, power of vested interests.
Nick; have to transform all politics. Lords reform, PR etc. Round of applause.
10th question: PFI. Nick: no ideological opp, but grave reservations about practicalities – dishonest accounting, no project sustainability
11th question: 0845 numbers used by DWP a rip-off. Nick agrees it’s a big issue, asks for details.
12th question: why vote LD rather than Green. Nick: because voting LD achieves things + LDs often greener than Greens
13th question – how to secure independent media. Nick: chilling that Tories parroting Murdoch Empire line.
14th question – how to increase women MPs. ‘Source of shame’ that LD party has so few women MPs.
Nick: great culture change in P’ment needed: has a shooting gallery but no creche.
15th question: EU. Nick: EU not perfect – ‘mindnumbingly transparent compared to Soviet Whitehall’
Lisbon Treaty referendum ‘no’ wd have solved nothing. EU wd have carried on as before. In/out only real question.
Nick: big issues – climate change, crime – can only be solved across Euroean borders.
And with a rousing appeal for people to ‘get’ internationalism, that working together is crucial, Nick closes. Big applause.
4 Comments
top performance by nick
Was David Cameron there as well doing his “Cameron Direct”?
If not, why not? We see so little of him and his colleagues in Oxfordshire….
he’s hardly ever in oxford as his party doesn’t have a chance of winning a parliamentary seat there. evan seems quite firnly ensconced and in oxford east they’re miles behind in a lib/lab marginal. even a council seat seems beyond their powers, it’s been almost ten years since they actually won a seat on the city or county councils from within the city.
A rather feeble answer from Nick on elective home education. There is no “liberal dilemma”. We already have a child protection system, so there is no need to empower bureaucrats to force their way into the homes of home educators (most of whom are happy to cooperate with officialdom). The Badman Report has yet to be published, and we have still to hear what the Government intends to do with it. The neo-Stalinist control freak tendency would love to ban elective home education outright and force all chidlren and young people to submit to the “bog standard” hellhole we call compulsory “education”. But there is the small problem of Article 8 – (a rock in the road for the control agenda – no wonder Cameron wants shot of it!). Nick could at least have excoriated the outrageous move by sections of the government and media to smear home educators as paedophiles.
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[...] writing this in the wake of Nick Clegg’s 54th Town Hall meeting since he became leader – held in fact in the Wesley Memorial Church in Oxford East. [...]