In case you missed it, here’s Nick Clegg talking on last night’s Newsnight about the EU referendum. When asked whether hope or fear would win the day for the In campaign, he said that the simple fact was that it was in our national interest to be part of the EU.
He also said that he regretted sitting next to David Cameron at PMQs for five years, saying it looked like we were passive rather than architects of many aspects of the government’s programme.
While we’re talking about Nick, here’s the Daily Politics film from Lib Dem Conference where members made him a clear hero.
And, finally, the Times (£) has been a bit naughty suggesting that a “Clegg aide” ran up a £50,000 rail bill. Turns out it’s a civil servant in the Cabinet Office, not a special adviser and nothing to do with Nick. Having said that, commuting from Scotland on a long term basis seems pretty extravagant so the man’s managers should review it.
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29 Comments
Good stuff. Right to fight back with Evan Davis trying to turn it into a Piers Morgan style personal sob story interview.
I’m fired up for this campaign. With all the problems in Europe at the moment the last thing we need to do is start walking around Europe begging leaders to sit down to discuss the problems with Cameron’s backbenchers. No one really cares and this is the travesty.
It’s good see Nick come out and talk about the experiences of coalition, and to do so sounding like a real person. Like him or loathe him, he is a good communicator of political ideas, still, on balance, an asset to our party and he will be needed to play a role in the EU referendum campaign.
Alex Feakes, yes he is a good communicator but no-one trusts him. I think it would be a mistake to have Clegg anywhere near any campaign. Like it or not, most people really really dislike Nick Clegg. He is the kiss of death to any campaign.
Please, please, please somebody lock Clegg in a room until the EU referendum is over.
Nice intelligent guy, resilient, civilised and courageous. So sad that it went wrong for him, and personally, as a radical Liberal, that I find it so very hard to support the direction he took the party in.
Can’t see anywhere how Lib Dems voted on “Fiscal Charter” tonight?
Against; see:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34524078
The one man who did more damage to Liberal Democracy in the UK than any other, ever. “Literally nobody and by the way literally nobody expected the result,” except those people who had looked at the results and knew what a mess you had made a mess of it over the first four years, Nick.
“… with the interests of the country at heart”, “maybe mistakes here and there,” “We put the country first,” “with the benefit of hindsight,” “I’m incredibly proud … ““I think we achieved remarkable things in remarkably difficult circumstances.” “… almost impossible for the British people to understand.” Bingo! So much in denial, so much writing a comforting self illusion and last of all blame the voters.
Nick, the voters of Britain totally understood that as Deputy Prime Minister you were a total waste of space. You lost the AV vote, the nation’s trust, somehow managed to allow a change in electoral expenses through which gave the Conservatives an even bigger advantage than ever and finally the votes of millions of people and as a result you have put Liberal Democracy back at least 50 years. It’s now down to Tim to try to stop the ship you have holed from sinking forever. Go away, you are just causing ever more damage.
Thanks for posting this. Abroad at the moment and would have missed it. “mistakes and misjudgments here and there” ? No. That was not the problem. “Putting the country first”, going into coalition – that was not the problem. The central stance IN coalition was the problem. Never getting across to the voters that Conservatives believed A and Liberals believed B and the coalition compromise was C. Voters saw C and thought that’s what Liberals want because we never told them about B. This is NOT hindsight. At the coalition special conference I successfully moved an amendment declaring that we remained an independent party capable of developing our own policy. Through the summer and autumn of 2010 I ran the “two beds” campaign demanding that we get across to the electorate how we differed from the Tories. It didn’t happen. Clegg is wrong to say that voters saw us as passive. They saw us as architects of Tory economic policy (which we embraced like a lover); they did see Nick and Danny applauding Osborne’s budgets. They did see us selling out on a range of our policies. When the election came, they could not see us as a party which stood for anything at all, let alone anything different.
Thankyou for that info, Jane Ann. At least some anti-neoliberal economics now. Perhaps David Evans’s plea is to some extent being followed (TF stopping the ship from entirely sinking!).
With Blair, Brown, Major and Clegg supporting the campaign I hope we will leave. One wonders if the campaign has a death wish with Rose who openly supported cheap labour and for EU migrants to work for less money and more hours fronting.. I never voted for the EU, those of us who predicted what the Common Market would become have been proved right. We were lied to. Trade Commissioner, in charge of TTIP, Cecilia Malmström has said ‘I do not take my mandate from the European people’. Vote leave.
After everything that has happened – after years of Nick Clegg’s predictions and political strategy having been shown to be wrong; the Party having been toxified and left with as many as many MPs as the DUP, so unable to defend positive achievements from 2010-2015; and Cameron now able to complete his ‘Change to Win’ agenda from 2007 – he thinks the problem was his style of politics was too sophisticated for the British public, and that his biggest mistake therefore was where he sat?
It reinforces that the only option the Party had left with a leader so unwilling to accept advice, almost any criticism, and to accept the opinion of others (including millions of former Lib Dem voters) was whether to replace them. A mixture of arrogance, political foolishness and an unwillingness to change are a bad combination for a liberal leader.
Mr Clegg has a lot to be regretful about.
There is every need for picking through the bones of the coalition period and the part played by the Lib Dems in general and Nick Clegg in particular. However I see no case whatsoever for the kind of personal anti-Clegg vituperation which has sullied LDV for so long and re-emerges in some of the postings on this thread. Let’s look at specific issues and examine ways in which we could have avoided or at least diminished some of the pitfalls that laid us low.
Nick rightly made rueful comment about his hapless situation at PM’s questions next to Cameron. I think there is a deeper issue behind that – he should not have accepted a role as Deputy Prime Minister in the first place. The DPM title is of fairly recent origin and has been used in the past to find a title for someone you want to give preferment but to whom you don’t want to give a proper job – John Prescott anyone? In the coalition negotiations the Lib Dem team should have insisted on having one of the great offices of state. Nick would have made an excellent Home Secretary, where his liberalism would have shone forth, or indeed Foreign Secretary where his multilingual skills and deep European experience would have been to the fore. Not only would this have helped the Lib Dem cause and visibility – it would have spared him from the excruciating experience he (and we) suffered at PM’s questions.
Denis Loretto wrote: ‘Let’s look at specific issues’.
Let’s look at major issues of strategy, and the opinions of millions of voters who have a broadly liberal outlook, but from whom we are now estranged. Let’s never again let down millions who vote for us, and be bamboozled and blinded into inaction by a charismatic leadership setting us onto a catastrophic course.
The view of EU is too small.
I recall th dynamic discussions of the previous referendum. We could see so many positives. Since then we have had Governments with unbelievably low ambition. It has played into the hands of those who want out whatever the cost.
Paul Pettinger, Nick didn’t say his “biggest mistake” was where he sat – he said he had many regrets (emphasised more than I agreed with) and offered where he sat as a “surprising” mistake.
Paul, if I understand you right you are saying that Nick and his senior colleagues dragged us into a coalition we should never have joined. l don’t know if you attended the special conference at Birmingham which was called to decide whether to endorse the coalition decision. There were about 2000 of us there and we were far from cheerleaders for the leadership. After a full and passionate debate only about 20 hands went up against the motion to go ahead. I still think that was the right decision at that time and as some sort of coalition is the only route by which we will participate in government for the foreseeable future we need to examine all that went wrong (and all that went right) so that we can learn how to convince a highly sceptical electorate that cross – party government has anything to offer them. It does no good just to rubbish the entire process .
Of course we need first of all to regain enough strength to be any good to anybody!
OK so the Coalition was his Gallipoli but he deserves a Dunkirk!
Clegg’s fatal flaw lay in him not being a mainstream British-style Social Liberal Democrat but some form of continental quasi-Centrist Liberal who surrounded himself with an inner circle of similar but probably even more economically-leaning colleagues.
This flew in the face of many of our own core values and those our supporters had come to expect of us.
The rest as they say, is history.
Denis – Bearing in mind Nick deliberately ignored two votes in Conference and instead totally supported the Secret Courts legislation, how can you possibly say “Nick would have made an excellent Home Secretary, where his liberalism would have shone forth”?
The issue isn’t anti Nick Clegg vituperation. It was a leader who refused to listen to the rest of the party repeatedly over NHS Reform, Secret Courts, Bedroom Tax etc. and deliberately used the expression “Grown up government” to belittle those who opposed his antics. The concern here is the concern of people facing up to the future and the possibility that the party will not have a future because of the damage done by a leader who set himself a target of doubling the number of Lib Dem MPs in two general elections, but instead managed to lose of nearly 90% of his MPs.
Nick really does have so much to answer for, but with reasoned arguments like “maybe mistakes here and there, misjudgements here and there” and “We put the country first but did so in a way that was damaging to, I mean the thing that, sort of, with the passage of time etc etc.” Ultimately he couldn’t even own up it and jumped away at the last moment. I don’t think we ever will.
Denis, I can very much understand from a personal point of view why “the kind of personal anti-Clegg vituperation which has sullied LDV for so long” may be upsetting. Basically it’s “Don’t kick a man when he’s down.”
Well, I can’t apologise for trying my damnedest, alongside many others, to put an end to Cleggism throughout the Coalition period. Libdems4change and parallel initiatives didn’t fall all that far short of attaining the critical mass which could have brought the party to its senses and achieved a partial electoral recovery (and incidentally, an LDV publication embargo at the critical time played its part in making libdems4change fall short).
What now? Firstly, there’s a debate to be had as to whether we should just quietly shuffle away from our past, “pick through the bones” to learn lessons internally, or take bolder actions to change our ways and make it clear to the public that we have done so. See (rather hidden on a meandering thread!) e.g.
https://www.libdemvoice.org/a-womans-place-at-conservative-party-conference-walking-with-dave-not-talking-on-panels-47781.html#comment-381642
Does kicking Clegg have to be part of that? Well, I’d prefer not, but, if Clegg is determined to go on talking about his “incredible pride”, his “put the country first but in a way which was damaging..” etectera – Well, he is just going to keep on doing us all damage. He makes us a laughing stock. Someone find him a job like Governor General of Vanuatu – Please!
@David Allen:
“and incidentally, an LDV publication embargo at the critical time played its part in making libdems4change fall short”
That one must have passed me by, David. Do remind us of how it was LDV’s fault that the letter only go 400 or so signatures out of 40,000 members….
Look, I think some people need to admit that Nick Clegg retains some credibility for many people who are voters this party needs.
Personally, I wish he hadn’t been leader, I think he made a lot of mistakes, I think for some people he will continue to be the epitome of what went wrong in the ocalition and regarded as a traitor but he is not some cuckoo in the nest, and obliterating him and his memory from the party is shooting us in the foot.
I can get more annoyed about Danny Alexander, David Laws and Jeremy Browne, for eg, than I can about Clegg.
We just need to keep him critiquing the Tories and find left-leaning people to critique what is going on in Labour.
It says an awful lot for Clegg’s sense of decency and discipline that he is on board with the current strategy to not fall for Osborne’s fiscal charter nonsense – when I want to annoy Labour friends I point out that Clegg has spoken out against it from the start (and the welfare bill) and their party can’t make up its mind. They sigh and admit it, and recognise that he is upholding arguments they wish their leadership would.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. He was a flawed leader, but he’s not a useless politician.
Caron, I have previously explained to you what you did – though of course, you knew perfectly well what you did.
Jonathan Pile wrote a brilliant article for LDV, published on 24th June 2014, which attracted an unprecedented level of intense debate and support:
https://www.libdemvoice.org/opinion-why-changing-leader-now-will-save-the-party-in-2015-and-beyond-2-41098.html
Inevitably, the storm of comment and fervent agreement with Pile’s article began to abate after a few days, simply because those with something to say had said it. Finding a way to keep up the momentum was clearly crucial. So I drafted an article which addressed the issue from a novel viewpoint. Many people were suggesting that either Clegg, or alternatively Cable, could be put up to lead us into the 2015 election on an avowedly “stop-gap” basis, with the express intention of choosing a new leader once the voters had voted. I thought that was crazy, and explained why.
My article was rejected by LDV on the grounds that they “weren’t sure that this adds anything new”. Oddly, nobody else had an LDV article published in support of Pile either, despite the avalanche of below-the-line support which Pile attracted. My article is still available elsewhere on the Web, see:
https://www.libdemvoice.org/opinion-why-changing-leader-now-will-save-the-party-in-2015-and-beyond-2-41098.html#comment-304416
http://libdemfightback.yolasite.com/liberal-free-voice/why-a-lame-duck-leader-won%E2%80%99t-save-us-in-2015
I don’t know whether LDV’s action in closing the doors to dissent was crucial in preserving Clegg’s leadership. What is clear is that you did what you could toward achieving that outcome.
I don’t blame Clegg – he’s just a over-entitled posh boy promoted way beyond his abilities – it’s those that supported him through every stupid decision that have brought the Lib Dems to brink of oblivion.
Nick Clegg gives reasonably frank if somewhat revisionist summary regarding some of the mistakes he made in government for which I applaud him. Lib Dem Voice editorial line once again waves the flag of ‘see, we were right all along to support the party’s hero Nick Clegg ‘. Didn’t he/we do well!
And so we see, once again, evidence supporting David Allen’s general thrust that LDV has not always ‘played with a straight bat’ when it came, and indeed comes, to the relationship between the views of ordinary members and their unswerving editorial support for the former DPM.
If Nick Clegg is discussing his mistakes, surely the best thing would have been to let this speak for itself without giving in to the desire to slip in the completely unscientific hero/zero straw poll. I am guessing it would be very easy to get the opposite result be selecting, either by design or neglect a different time and place in which to run the experiment.
Ah, for the silence of Ed Milliband!
David Allen and Stephen Hesketh are 100% correct.
The fact that there are still so many Lib Dems who support Nick Clegg indicates that most of the Party have not learnt the lessons of a huge electoral defeat. Instead of boasting about “hero”, you should be worrying because it means the Lib Dems are nowhere near even thinking about a recovery.