It’s Nick Clegg’s 48th birthday today and we at Liberal Democrat Voice obviously wish him a happy day and successful year ahead.
I thought it might be a good idea (with a little help from LDV colleagues) to take a look at some of the good things he’s done, 48 of them to be precise, and encourage party supporters to make 48 calls to voters in our key seats to tell them about them this week. Not all of them in each call, of course, but there’s plenty to be going on with.
So, here we go:
1. From his very first major speech as leader, championing mental health and in government improving treatment and services.
2. Investing money in disadvantaged kids in school which is already helping to improve attainment figures in that group.
3. Defying both Labour and the Conservatives to cut income tax for people on low and middle incomes.
4. Having the guts to take questions for half an hour every week from members of the public on live radio.
5. Not just voting for same sex marriage but actively and enthusiastically being comfortable with it.
6. Driving through shared parental leave, a policy which sums up what liberals are all about and ticks all the stronger economy, fairer society, opportunity for everyone boxes.
7. Arguing for mandatory sex education in all schools.
8. Making sure that the UK sticks with its commitment to the European Convention on Human Rights.
9. Mocking the Daily Mail when they patronised female ministers.
10. Stopping the Tories from removing benefits from under 25s.
11. Killing off Theresa May’s web-snooping plans.
12. Ensuring that the enquiry into phone hacking was led by a Judge.
13. Making sure that Leveson’s recommendations were implemented when David Cameron was unwilling.
14. Ensuring children have a free hot, healthy meal for their first three years of schooling.
15. That brilliant Christmas card.
17. Saying, way back in 2009, that he’d go to jail rather than carry a compulsory ID card.
18. Leading the calls for proper drugs policy reform.
19. Blasting so-called child expert Gina Ford’s ideas as “absolute nonsense”
20. He met the Dalai Lama, unlike Alex Salmond, who buckled the minute the Chinese Embassy sent the boys round.
21. Supporting the Alliance Party’s Anna Lo when she was subject to horrid racist attacks.
22. Making a stand on mandatory sentences for knife crime.
23. Getting angry about “demeaning, misogynist, medieval” insults to women in the Daily Mail
24. Leading the Liberal Democrats into government for the first time in 80 years and making it work. This Government is certainly more functional than the last one and has at least accomplished its stated aim to sort out the perilous economic circumstance it inherited.
25. Dealing with the bile he gets in the House of Commons with grace and humour.
26. Being able to speak to many foreign leaders in their own language.
27. At least attempting to reform the House of Lords until he was stopped by both Labour and the Conservatives.
29. Defeating the then Labour government on allowing the Gurkas the right to live in the UK.
32. Stopped the Tories from implementing profit-making schools.
33. Standing up for the rights of Afghan interpreters to live in the UK.
34. Setting out his Liberal stall at the UN in 2010:
These values are sometimes described as ‘Western’ values – but only by people who do not know their history. Four centuries ago, the great Mughal emperor Akbar was legislating for religious freedom and equality in what is now India, while in parts of Europe ‘heretics’ were being burned at the stake.
The truth is that these liberal ideals of equality, law and self-determination cannot be claimed by any nation, or hemisphere. They are global values with global force. They are also the values at the heart of the UN Charter.
We should never apologise for promoting the idea that women and men are equal; never flinch from insisting that governments chosen by their people are better; never shy away from our insistence that nobody should be silenced because of their religion or beliefs.
35. Being brilliant with the children on the Call Clegg Christmas special.
36. Getting himself selected at the top of the list of a region he had no real connection with in 1998, winning over the members and working tirelessly to give the East Midlands its first Liberal Democrat Parliamentarian in 60 years.
37. Not wearing this or any other onesie in public.
38. Wiping the floor with David Cameron and Gordon Brown in the Leaders’ Debates in 2010 (watch the ITV one here) and I wouldn’t bet against him doing similar this time.
39. Being brave enough to say that wealthier older people should forego some benefits.
40. Extending nursery education for 40% of the poorest 2 years olds, much higher than anywhere else in the UK.
41. Securing £150 million to give young people with eating disorders the help they need.
42. 2 million apprenticeships. Opportunities for young people.
43. Making sure that if we’re going to have a monarchy, the first born child inherits, not the first born son.
44. Taking the time to write really thoughtful and lovely handwritten letters to party members on their special occasions.
45. Explaining the party’s actions frequently and with remarkable intellectual agility to the membership including regional talks and remarkable question and answer sessions at conference.
46. Keeping in touch with his Sheffield residents and people around the country with regular “town hall” style meetings.
47. Facing down Michael Gove on a range of crazy ideas, and ultimately seeing his removal from the education post.
48. Having the courage to advocate the positives of our EU membership.
So, thanks, Nick for all that. Happy Birthday. Have a good day.
And, everyone else, do those phone calls. If every one of our members’ forum members did 48 calls we could ring round the best part of 2 whole strategic seats. And if we did that every month…. Go on, it’ll only take you an hour or so.
Consider this post to be LDV’s birthday card to Nick Clegg. Comments will be pre-moderated as you obviously only write nice things on a birthday card, don’t you?
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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8 Comments
being against the return of hunting with dogs is also important,as this has prevented return of hare coursing as well as fox hunting and stag hunting.
This is one of my favourite things he did…sticking it to Labour very early in the Coalition about Iraq! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fo-TV5aLTM
Happy birthday, Nick.
Many members will disagree with this but his efforts to persuade the Commons to vote to respond to Assad’s use of chemical weapons against innocent Syrians is another of his best moments.
Happy Birthday Nick. I’d forgotten some of these points – a great idea.
What a long list of Lib Dem achievements in coalition. Well done! A great image of Nick ….. could be used on a poster between images of Cameron and Miliband with a strap line ‘Who can you trust?’ …. a tick next to Nick’s image and crosses next to the other two. It’s that simple!!!
@Pat
I really don’t think it’s a good idea to put the word “trust” next to a picture of Nick Clegg. And that’s not meant as a snide remark just a reflection of reality given where he now is in the public mind.
Mark …. well I’m a member of the public! And I’ve recently joined the Lib Dems! My assessment is that Nick Clegg is a darn sight more trustworthy than either Cameron or Miliband. I hope I’m not proved wrong! Reading LDV comments, I am beginning to realise there are Lib Dems who admire Nick Clegg and others who seek to undermine his leadership. With a little over four months to the GE, I would have thought it’s time to get behind the leader and the team.
Okay, yes, it is worth remembering some of the liberal things he has done. 8, 32, and 48 are stand-out ones, for me, personally, and I like his championing of feminism and sexual matters despite the paucity of significant concrete progress (admittedly mostly blocked by the Tories). I hope he was able to have a pleasant birthday, despite the terrible news from France on that day. But he is 48 and 2 days now, so I (as a member who remains, in the hope of a change of direction after the election) can say what I really think? There are two huge failings for me:
1. His kow-towing to a destructive and counter-productive Tory economic policy immediately after the last election, (which has almost certainly left the public finances in a worse position than they would have been had Government helped to maintain economic activity) and
2. His attitude to public sector provision of health and education (which he seems do his best to hide, but occasionally betrays verbally, and more often through little-publicised actions).
Neither are what I would expect from someone who describes himself as a liberal. Maybe he is a cynic, as many would portray, and simply wishes to win votes from suckers in order to undermine real progress, in order to protect his own kith and kin. But being charitable, I do wonder if his very privileged upbringing (for which he obviously cannot be blamed) makes him a man who simply does not really have much real understanding of the huge amount of need in our country: the poverty, not just in financial terms (although I think his mistaken economic policy has made that worse) but in educational and aspirational terms, and also, particularly for the elderly, in terms of declining health and social care.
I think Mr Clegg has a soft, well-meaning rich man’s sympathy for ‘the poor’, by which he would mean the very poor. He seems to me to be the sort of person who would happily dole out charity to the bottom 10%, or make marginal adjustments to tax ‘to help them improve themselves’. But he does not appear to me to see the need for real, stable, and lasting improvements to the great twin liberal social services that ordinary average-income people, not terribly poor financially, but without his privileges, rely on for their essential security (the NHS) and betterment (public sector schools, colleges and universities).
He often gives me the impression he would prefer to tinker with private sector innovation at the margins of these services, apparently hoping for some impossible replication of independent schools or privately-provided health care for all, rather than encourage and enable the state sector employees CURRENTLY performing these important tasks to make their services world class. I suspect, like many wealthy people, he would privately consider that to be a ‘socialist’ approach to be demonised, rather than a social liberal approach.
The result – which, though he has been complicit, cannot be laid entirely at his door, since it is essentially a Tory philosophy – has been a significant degree of disillusionment and despondency in our great public services. In my view, that can never be a recipe for a real, genuinely inspiring, genuinely liberal, improvement in the secure good health, and radically improved educational attainment, of the vast majority of Britons.