Deputy Prime Minister gave a wide-ranging interview to The House magazine, in which he discusses how it’s right for the two coalition parties to differentiate themselves once a stable government was formed:
In the run-up to the general election, you may remember, the tabloids were screaming, saying that if there was a hung Parliament locusts would descend from the sky and the sun would be blotted out, you know… so we needed for those first few months to show the most important thing of all, which is this is a government that works, and actually works rather well.
Of course, after that phase you then get [that] we’re different parties, we do have different instincts, we do have different values. I just think we are quite relaxed in government that we have our differences – sometimes they are played out in private, sometimes they are played out in public.
Nick goes on to discuss what he sees as significant achievements for the party in government, and, in a telling line, describes the difficulty Lib Dem peers face in supporting legislation they wouldn’t under different circumstances:
Let’s be blunt: I am asking, day in, day out, Liberal Democrat peers to vote on things that they wouldn’t do in a month of Sundays if it was a Liberal Democrat government.
The interview covers such ground as reform of the upper house, Nick’s stance on the Middle East and changes to the tax system.
You can read the whole interview here.
* Prateek Buch is Director of the Social Liberal Forum and serves on the Liberal Democrat Federal Policy Committee
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One Comment
” he discusses how it’s right for the two coalition parties to differentiate themselves once a stable government was formed:”
Er..no.
It was right for the two coalition parties to differentiate themselves immediately they formed the coalition. Still, 18 months down the line is better than not at all,if it happens. It would be a delusion to think that the efforts to date have made more than a ‘blip’ with the media and more than little or nothing with the electorate at large.