In the Telegraph today, Alex Proud — who self-describes as “A lapsed Liberal and a rugged, Gladstonian Liberal who likes free markets and the odd gunboat, but a Liberal nonetheless” — reflects on his recent meeting with Nick Clegg and Simon Hughes:
… sitting between Simon Hughes and Nick Clegg I was reminded for the first time in ages just how inspiring good politicians can be. They force us to think outside the box of our own petty concerns and project ourselves onto a national and even global stage. They remind us that we can change the world for the better. They actually made me feel like a teenager again – raging against Thatcher while still admiring her steeliness and her ability to bend the country to her will. Dare I say it, they even ignited a spark of nostalgia for a time before my birth, when we felt we could stand up to dictators, end war and make the next generation fairer and healthier.
It was a great feeling. My brain snapped out of its usual slough of grubby, realpolitiking despond. I stopped wondering how many thousandths of a foreign CEO’s opinion my own vote was worth and felt a rush of new ideas and fresh thinking. It was a bit like the hit you get from a couple of lines of coke, without the nasty selfishness, the inane bullshit and the desire to smoke a thousand cigarettes. I wanted to roll up my sleeves and start solving the country’s problems. And I experienced all this within a few minutes of sitting next to someone who is often reviled as a useful idiot.
That’s the point, though. He isn’t. Clegg is a capable, intelligent and deeply decent man. Simon Hughes, who was on the other side of me, is, if anything, even more decent. Now the Justice Minister, he’s the Lib-Dems’ longest serving MP. He’s passionately pro-London, passionately fair and renowned for helping the people of his Southwark constituency, regardless of their political stripe. We discussed the capital and some of what I’d written on its problems. Sitting next to him, I was struck by how much this man (who was clearly so much wiser and more accomplished than me) was willing to listen. Even if he was just humouring me, he did it for so long and so well, he’s still a far better person than I am.
Clegg spoke about the £2bn the government will spend on getting the very poor into education early and seemed genuinely excited, not to have won an argument, but to have done something good. And this was the tone of the whole evening. It wasn’t about scoring party political points. It was about making life better for British people. I went in cynical and bored with the coalition and angry about what it had done to my party and left loving politics and wanting to make Britain great again.
His unexpectedly happy experience contrasted sharply with the scornful cynicism his mention that he was due to meet Nick Clegg drew. It prompted him to suggest that maybe the armchair cynics might want to give our politicians (regardless of political stripes) a bit of a break:
… in an age where it’s fashionable to be utterly cynical about politicians, I think that perhaps we should start giving them the benefit of the doubt again. Recognise that they’re only human and stop holding them to impossible standards. Remember that we react to circumstances, change our minds and often find it impossible to follow though on our promises. Clegg screwed up over tuition fees (and he knows it) but that doesn’t mean we should all hate his guts. Blair may not believe he screwed up over Iraq, but, that aside, he was our most talented leader since Thatcher and did a great deal of good.
Even if we’re not going to do it for them, we should do it for ourselves. If we always believe our politicians are corrupt, venal and useless, we wind up with a kind of political nihilism. There are plenty of countries where you see the results of this, but one of the worst in the developed world is Italy. When the majority really believes that nothing good can come out of the system, that’s when nothing does. You end up with a political class that’s riddled with corruption, sex scandals and criminality and, ultimately you get leaders like Berlusconi. Politicians who really are only good for slagging off. Is that what we really want?
It’s a fair question. You can read Alex Proud’s article in full here.
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13 Comments
The trouble with this is no one forced Clegg to support an increase in tuition fees and he is rightly criticised for breaking a promise that he could have kept. When I look at the overcrowding in prisons, I’m not sure how Ken Clarke the Lib Dem is arrived at except to say that what used to be main stream Toryism is now mainstream Lib Dem.
All I ask of a politician is that they do what they said they were going to do on the tin and that they are the voter’s employees. To me the problem is that they think we are voting for leaders rather for representatives.
In Nick Clegg’s case it backfired because he gave too much weight favourable media coverage in 2010 and ignored who was voting for him. Hubris can seem unfair.
I would suggest that someone that praises Blair as the most talented leader since Thatcher isn’t quite the person to convince people about the merits of Nick Clegg.
I think and according to Wikipedia as well and as most here will know Alan Beith is the longest serving current Lib Dem MP – elected in 1973 as supposed to 1983 for Simon Hughes. I didn’t realise until I looked it up how big the by-election swing was in Bermondsey – 44.2%. which Wikipedia has as the largest swing ever in a by-election.
I was going to ask who is longest and shortest serving Liberal/SDP/Alliance/Lib Dem MP? But Wikipedia gives the longest (indeed the longest serving MP of any party) to Charles Pelham Villiers and I think the shortest serving would be by-election winners post-1945 Nicol Stephen (154 days) and pre-1945 Donald Bennett (94 days). These are from shortest serving by-election winners – it is possible that someone elected at a General Election who died etc. very soon after beats them but I am not aware of any.
Anyway back to doing something useful… :)!
We do have a number of decent principled MPs.
Liberal Democrat – Julian Huppert, Simon Hughes, John Pugh, Tim Farron
Labour – John McDonnell, Dennis Skinner, Tom Watson, Ian Lavery
Conservative – David Davis, Douglas Carswell, Robert Halfon, Zac Goldsmith
Green – Caroline Lucas
Unfortunately the vast majority of them don’t appear to have any real positions of power.
I am sure by the way many other names can be added to the list above, but they are just some that come to mind, who seem to care about their constituencies and also the values their party is supposed to hold.
Should have googled more – see there is a Wikipedia entry on shortest serving MPs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom_MPs_with_the_shortest_service which gives James Annand as the shortest serving Liberal!
Talking of ‘Useless politicians’, the Conservatives have just produced this interactive map of places in the UK where Labour politicians do not rate their own Party Leader much at all.
http://justnotuptoit.com/
I wonder if anyone is sitting somewhere, beavering away on similar maps for messrs Clegg and Cameron?
The hatred of Miliband is a silly press construct. He is indefinitely preferable to Blair, Brown and the extremely unpopular and shady Mandelson. As for Cameron, they don’t need a map for him, they have a party to explain his unpopularity – UKIP.
Clegg is toast, but it’s not over for the Liberal Democrats. In New Zealand in the 90s they had a National / New Zealand First coalition, which ended up with almost total wipeout at the subsequent election for New Zealand First as the minority partner, with many of the same strains and issues the Liberals face now, going from 17 seats to 5 (the New Zealand parliament has 121 seats ). However 3 years later they were back to 13 seats. They have done less well since then, but due to scandals and suspected fraud, rather than coalition politics, and actually got 0 seats in 2008. By 2011 they got back up to 8 seats.
“If you believe politicians are useless, you’ll end up with useless politicians”
Yes and if you believe what self-serving newspapers tell you, you are even more likely to believe that politicians are useless … and that wind turbines are a blot on the landscape, that nuclear power is safe, that ever-rising house prices are a good thing, that the bankers will leave the country en-masse if subjected to the normal laws of the land …
Oops I was supposed to be coming back to this before posting!!!
It should have continued … how refreshing to read the comments from Alex Proud, a professional journalist writing from a long-lost heart! More please!
Miliband really is rather useless. I challenge anyone to name one thing he achieved as a minister. He isnt even the best prime minister material in his own family. Labour really dropped the ball when then chose him. That and having Balls as a running reminder of Labour financial incompetence. Im far closer to Labour policy than Tory policy but Miliband really is so hopeless as a leader he makes Nick Clegg appear like Churchill.
Richard Easter
In New Zealand in the 90s they had a National / New Zealand First coalition, which ended up with almost total wipeout at the subsequent election for New Zealand First as the minority partner, with many of the same strains and issues the Liberals face now, going from 17 seats to 5 (the New Zealand parliament has 121 seats ).
Indeed. Yet Liberal Democrat Voice is full of people who come here to abuse Liberal Democrats using the argument that somehow the Liberal Democrats could have got the Tories to give up all their principles and policies and adopt Liberal Democrat ones instead, using the argument that if you are the third party in a situation where neither of the bigger two parties has a complete majority, you can do that. As the New Zealand situation mentioned here shows, and almost any other case where there’s a junior coalition partner much smaller in MPs than the senior one, it just doesn’t work like that.