Outgoing leader Nick Clegg will lead for the party in responding to the Queen’s Speech. This must feel quite strange for him. It’s the first Queen’s Speech in 5 years that he hasn’t had a hand in shaping. All the Tory policies he kicked into touch will be in there bringing every decent liberal out in hives.
Even if they do end up delaying the repeal of the Human Rights Act, there are bound to be all manner of civil liberties infringements, future welfare reform and ineffective housing plans to deal with.
Nick says:
The Liberal Democrats worked hard to ensure that the Coalition Government’s agenda had a clear thread of liberalism running through it – from the priority we gave to mental health and the green agenda, to creating the pupil premium and protecting our civil liberties.
So it is dispiriting – if pretty unsurprising – to see how quickly, instead of building on those achievements, the new Conservative Government is turning its back on that liberal stance.
The human rights we hold dear, our right to privacy in an online age, our future as an open-minded, outward-looking country, are all hanging in the balance again because of the measures being announced by the Conservative Government.”
My party’s parliamentary presence may be reduced in size, but our mission is clearer than ever.
As we did in the Coalition Government, we will fight any attempt to weaken the fundamental rights of our citizens.
We will stand up for the poorest and the most vulnerable.
And we will always defend a Britain that is at its best when it is open-hearted, open-minded and outward-looking.
For those of us who have followed Clegg’s career from the beginning, this will be quite an emotional occasion. We know that he has been judged very harshly. We have confidence that history will be much kinder to him but we’re not there yet. Many of the 14,000 new members who have joined us in the last few days have done so because of rather than despite our outgoing leader.We would do well to remember that.
* 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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40 Comments
You seek to speak on behalf of new members, but dismiss the message of 4.4 million former voters. I thought LDV required people to be polite.
I can’t help but feel that Nick Clegg needs to take a bit of advice from John Major on this one and realise that “when the curtain falls, it’s time to get off the stage”.
Can’t one just forgo the response altogether? The attention to it is likely to be only negative.
Caron – you seem to have lost sight of the fact that had NC shown any moral fibre and had resigned as leader after the EU elections at the latest – any of his likely replacements would have had time to restore the Party’s, much derided, reputation by the time of the GE.
Had this had been the case the Party would very likely have retained 30 or even 40 seats and it would be almost certain that the Tories would not have an outright majority or even been in power now.
So NC’s lack of rectitude has not only allowed the Tories to heap much suffering on the weakest and poorest in society – because he did not ‘just say No’ – during the coalition – he has also given the Tories the opportunity to reek another five years of suffering on a huge number of people over the next five years.
Aren’t your rose-tinted glasses, marked NC, beginning to fade at all yet?
I hope Nick doesnt do a John Major. Now more than ever we need all of our MPs to be performing at their best. Unleash the Clegg!
Many of the 14,000 new members who have joined us in the last few days have done so because of rather than despite our outgoing leader.
Many will have also seized the first moment to join after he left.
I have anecdotal evidence (and yes, the plural of anecdote is not data) of both. Seems strange to ask someone so polarising to do this though.
Many of the millions of voters who deserted us in the last few days did so because of our outgoing leader. We would do well to remember that.
“Now more than ever we need all of our MPs to be performing at their best” … because the political strategy set and unswervingly pursued by the outgoing leadership was the most significant factor in our comprehensive rejection. The rot set in during the days following the 2010 election.
If Nick Clegg is to undertake this task on behalf of the party, he must do so honourably and not as the equidistant cliche Clegg. I hope the surviving crew members have given him a very clear brief.
It’s worth saying: until the party elects a new leader, Nick Clegg is still technically its leader. It would be equally inappropriate for either leadership candidate to deliver the response, and none of the other sitting MPs has a leadership role currently. So Nick is really the only one able to respond. Quite how he responds is, of course, up to him, but I suspect he’ll be more the orator we’re used to from party conferences than some kind of grand equivocator…
As Tony Benn used to say, it is the issues that matter. Freed from the restraints of coalition, I suspect Nick will articulate a liberal critique of the Tory agenda which will resonate with the people we need to attract if we are to start re-building the party.
If Nick does not respond, then who else could at this point? And to suggest we make no reply at all would confirm what some see as our irrelevance post-election
“…. We have confidence that history will be much kinder to him but we’re not there yet.”
That may be your wish, Caron. Unfortunately for you and anyone who shares your wish it is already too late. This history has already been written and history is about facts not about emotion or wish fulfilment.
The whole point of a political party in a democratic country is to win the trust of the voters and win elections.
The whole point of the leader of a political party is to inspire ad enthuse party embers to win elections.
In May 2011, May 2012, May 2013, May 2014 and May 2015, along with every parliamentary by-election since Clegg became leader in 2008, the facts of the resuts speak for themselves. History has been written already.
We have just suffered the worst general election nightmare in 45 years. You would do well to remember that.
How can anyone possibly say with confidence that we would have retained 30-40 seats if Nick hadn’t been leader? There is no certainty that would have been the case.
It is in fact perfectly possible that we would have been wiped out in the second election in 2010 had we not gone into coalition.
Paul Pettinger, disagreeing with you is not impolite.
Given the main drivers of the General Election result (the SNP and Miliband) it should be pretty clear that having a different leader would have made little difference… except perhaps bringing down the coalition a year early, and discrediting us even more.
My sentence should have read —
“..The whole point of the leader of a political party is to inspire and enthuse party members to win elections.”
Although given the state of the party in May 2015, maybe “embers” was right.
Breathing life into the “dying embers” of the Liberal Democrats will be the task for the new leader.
Caron Lindsay 27th May ’15 – 8:11am
“How can anyone possibly say with confidence that we would have retained 30-40 seats if Nick hadn’t been leader?”
Since the number of Councillors and MEPs holding their seats fell dramatically after NC took the Party into the style of coalition he agreed to and then broke his tuition fees pledge – is it really such a leap of imagination to suggest a different leader would have [1] been given a chance to show that they, unlike NC, had integrity and [2] were prepared to say ‘No’ to the most vicious of the Tory’s proposals – and would very likely have improved, significantly, the number of seats held at the GE?
John Grout
It’s worth saying: until the party elects a new leader, Nick Clegg is still technically its leader.
Indeed. If he were not the one responding on behalf of the party to the Queen’s Speech, who else would it be?
I’ve been very critical of his leadership, yes (there were some figures published recently which suggest I might have been his biggest critic on LDV), but I’ve never agreed with the criticism which seems to suggest somehow he could have persuaded 307 Conservative MPs to give up their principles and agree to Liberal Democrat ones instead. A lot of what has been said about the Coalition by critics of the Liberal Democrats is based on the assumption that a small party in coalition with a much bigger one (in terms of seats, which is what counts, and what the British people agreed counts when by two-to-one they voted to support our distortional representation system in 2011) has huge power in it, but that is simply NOT the case – it is just not what you ever see in similar situations elsewhere. The central thrust of the 2010-2015 government was BOUND to be that of the Conservative Party, and anyone who didn’t like that should have called out for proportional representation.
Sorry to say, this nonsense about small third parties having immense power in no-majority situation was repeated in our own party’s national comments on the danger of a minority Labour government with a large SNP presence, when the very thing we most needed to get across in the general election campaign to save our seats was the OPPOSITE of this. It is this sort of gross incompetence that means I think Clegg was a disaster as a leader, I could accept his right-wing orientation if he was at least competent in leading the party and keeping it united.
John Roffey: your counterfactual would work better if Labour had done better in the election.
It will be interesting to hear Nick Clegg’s response, since this will be the first time since 2010 when he has been able to speak without the shackles of collective government responsibility. Did Nick Clegg veto some or many of “the most vicious of the Tory’s proposals”? We have to let him tell us.
Tuition fees will not remain a static issue; my prediction is that before the end of this parliament there will be as many claims protesting that the scheme is too expensive because in effect Lib Dems did, for the most part, honour their pledge as those protesting that the pledge was broken. The weakness of the scheme will be that it transfers debt to future generations, an objective that the coalition proclaimed to avoid. My other prediction is that as the Tories try to change the scheme to make it less generous, Labour will do a volte face and willoppose change to the system.
I think if we had ditched Clegg Thatcher style after the Euros and taken a harder line with the Tories – ie stuck to the coalition agreement, then we would have got at least 30 seats. But we didnt, so lets give Clegg a chance to perform to his strengths.
“It is in fact perfectly possible that we would have been wiped out in the second election in 2010 had we not gone into coalition.”
Why do you distrust your voters so much? If the Lib Dems had stuck to their principles then their voters would not have deserted them. It’s hardly rocket science. Yes the rightwing media et al would probably have lambasted the Lib Dems but those people are not the ones who voted for you in 2010. You should pay more heed to your natural voters and less heed to your enemies.
Ps I was one of the 2010 voters and I would still be voting Lib Dem if they had simply stopped the NHS reforms.
Quite right Caron, but on what measure can Nick Clegg be objectively assessed? He has failed to meet his own priorities, let alone that of many Lib Dems – we didn’t build a new politics, we didn’t restore public trust in politicians, we haven’t fixed the economy (public debt is still growing), we haven’t stayed in Government for 10 years and we haven’t won millions of new voters in the centre ground. The opposite is true, in all cases, and we have sailed into disaster (as many of us spent years warning, despite having been dismissed). This isn’t a pop band group, but a political Party. On what terms can Nick Clegg be assessed to be a success? To many of us, hailing him now as a kind of hero is to add insult to injury, and makes us question the objectivity of those who support him. We’re both humanists – a life stance that ask questions of truth claims and around how knowledge is acquired. If history will judge him kindly, in what way will it? If Nick Clegg’s tenure as leader isn’t a failure, then what would failure look like?
Phyllis
Why do you distrust your voters so much? If the Lib Dems had stuck to their principles then their voters would not have deserted them. It’s hardly rocket science.
You haven’t a clue about how the Liberal Democrat vote works. Or how Liberal Democrat financing works.
First thing – most local parties had no money left to fight another general election campaign.
Second thing – most people who vote Liberal Democrat are not people who take the line “I vote that way because I always have and my parents and grandparents always did”.
Labour and the Conservatives would have made sure that an early general election was fought on the lines “the existence of the Liberal Democrats makes Britain impossible to govern, so get rid of them so we can get back to stable government”. A minority Tory government planning to have this early general election would have been in a win-win situation: anything that goes well take the credit, anything that goes badly blame the Liberal Democrats for not alllowing a stable government that can take the necessary decisions.
People who had voted Liberal Democrat in 2010 on the grounds “Hmm, maybe give them a chance”, or “Well, they seem to be working hard round here” and other such things would very easily be persuaded to switch to one of Labour or Conservatives having been told “It’s all you fault we’re going through this again”. Especially as they probably wouldn’t get much Liberal Democrat literature due to the local party having no money left to pay for it.
Thanking the LDs for reigning in the Tories would be like thanking someone for only punching them in the face once. The Tories were put in power by the LDs, and we’re supposed to thankful that they very slightly mitigated the negative effects of this betrayal? The LDs have only achieved two notable things:
1 – put the Tories in power in 2010.
2 – Screw up badly enough to give the Tories a majority in 2015
If the LDs had never betrayed their voters by going into coalition, VAT wouldn’t have risen, the disabled wouldn’t have been given the horrible treatment of ATOS, the poor wouldn’t be going to food banks in record numbers, we wouldn’t have almost entered a double dip recession, the bedroom tax would never have passed, we wouldn’t have wasted the concept of voting reform for this generation on the ‘miserable little compromise’ of AV, pays wouldn’t have been frozen, working tax credit wouldn’t have been cut, thousands of people wouldn’t have been made redundant, the ‘omnishambles’ budget would never have happened, need I go on? And yet we’re supposed to be grateful?
Matthew H, it wasnt the fact of the coalition but the execution of it from negotiations and rose garden onwards.
Martin 27th May ’15 – 11:36am
Martin – I use words like moral fibre, integrity and rectitude because I believe these are important qualities in a leader – and that this is also the case for the electorate generally.
The vast majority understand that there has to be levels of rank in a society. If rank corresponds to inner worth then those of lower rank accept the leadership – and the political class are the leaders of our nation.
Politician’s reputation for honesty has fallen to an all time low – lower than that of estate agents. Because these politicians value wealth so highly – they assume it is also the case for the electorate and therefore believe that if they can prove by some spurious device that everyone is better off – they will succeed.
It is true that the Tories have won an outright victory – but few analysts believe this was as a result of people feeling better off – but as a result of a massively funded campaign of fear.
I have suggested elsewhere that if the Party makes every effort to be honest in all of its undertakings – there is likely to be a huge premium in support from this approach.
Whatever NC says – freed from the shackles of government – will he be believed?
“Nick is really the only one able to respond. ”
He is the only member of “The quad” that who was re-elected, which implies knowledge and credibility.
He chaired the Cabinet Sub-committee on Home Affairs..
Before he was Leader he was our shadow Home Secretary.
Please bear that in mind with the Human Rights Act being such a prominent and important issue.
PS.
Please use the correct name for the party, we decided to kep out of the alphabet soup.
Federal conference representatives voted for for “Liberal Democrats”.
The leadership told The Independent that “Lib Dem” was “acceptable in a headline”.
Paul Pettinger
“..This isn’t a pop band group…”
True, if it had been a pop band they would have ditched the lead singer last year on the basis of “musical differences”.
“until the party elects a new leader, Nick Clegg is still technically its leader”
I thought Sal Brinton was de facto Acting Leader.
Martin 27th May ’15 – 11:36am
Since you mentioned the unexpectedly poor showing from Labour – I am surprised that more attention has not been paid to this on LDV:
UK 2015 ELECTION RIGGED? 200,000 POSTAL VOTES GO MISSING!!
HERE IS HOW THE ELECTION IN UK WAS RIGGED!
https://butlincat.wordpress.com/2015/05/09/uk-2015-election-rigged-200000-postal-votes-go-missing/
Alistair
Matthew H, it wasnt the fact of the coalition but the execution of it from negotiations and rose garden onwards.
Yes, so let me repeat – many people had vast over-expectations about what a party of 57 MPs can achieve in coalition with a party of 307 MPs when no other coalition is viable and the main opposition party had no intention of ever helping the party of 57 MPs push its case.
This was made worse by the leadership and public relations people at the top of the Liberal Democrats using a strategy which involved exaggerating what was achievable under those circumstances and what had been achieved, and thus just feeding and justifying the lines used to attack it.
@Caron Lindsay:
“How can anyone possibly say with confidence that we would have retained 30-40 seats if Nick hadn’t been leader? There is no certainty that would have been the case.”
No, Caron,the only certainty is that what we said would be the case, and was denied and denied by those in denial, has become the case. It gives me, as someone who joined the Liberal Party in October 1972 no pleasure whatsoever to emphasise this. Now it must be, to quote John Major. ‘back to basics’.
FFS we dont know why “many” let alone most of our former voters deserted us & we will never know . Polls are pretty useless on reasons why people do things & anecdotes always confirm the opinions of those telling them. Its very likely we will never “know” what happened, all we can do is make , more or less intelligent guesses.
To me the biggest single factor was the polls. The consistent finding of a bipolar struggle on a knife-edge meant we got squeezed as voters rushed to stop Labour or Tories. If voters had known the real situation they might have been prepared to vote for us to moderate the Tories, some Labour voters would have seen Labour as a wasted vote & we would have got some space to defend our time in government.
This is the first Election where the faults of the pollsters really altered the results, because they determined the whole story of what the contest was about. I am not sure anything we said or did could have changed that.
Matthew Huntbach ” You haven’t a clue about how the Liberal Democrat vote works”
Well since several of ‘the Lib Dem vote’ were mine and my friends’ and family’s, my view is as valid as yours. There may have been a few of the ‘give them a chance votes’ but there were also many supporting ‘ no more broken promises’ and ‘let’s have principled politics again’ votes.
Mourning can be a long and difficult process but, from this, it’s beginning to look as if some in the party have only just managed to move from the denial stage to the self-pity stage. As a party we really do have to move on and Clegg replying to the Queens Speech is a positive hindrance to this process.
Regardless of how many very welcome new members we have gained since polling day (and who is to lay claim to a single reason for them all joining) a far larger electorate spoke on Polling Day and their message to us and to Clegg was very clear – it was a resounding no.
If the party is to thrive once again, to rediscover it’s roots in community campaigning, a period of silence from the architects of our demise would be wise. Do we really want to end up like Labour and Tories, governed more by the ghosts of Thatcher and Blair than by philosophy, principle or ideas?
@David you could have had brown and Balls and total economic collapse – look at southern Europe for what austerity really looks like – do yes you’re supposed to be grateful.
funny how people so determinedly claim their own biased perspective as being ‘the truth’.. There’s none so blind..
“….If the party is to thrive once again, to rediscover it’s roots in community campaigning, a period of silence from the architects of our demise would be wise”
Phil Rimmer is absolutely correct with this comment.
How many lost deposits were needed to convince the ghosts of Blatcherism that they were wrong?
It was nice to see that Nick Clegg was included in the BBC News last night. I hope we will continue to be included even if it is after the SNP when we have a new leader.
Caron Lindsay
“It is in fact perfectly possible that we would have been wiped out in the second election in 2010 had we not gone into coalition.”
I don’t believe that we would have ended up with only 8 MPs in a second 2010 election. I accept that having another general election in 2010 or maybe in May 2011 would have been difficult and we would have lost many seats, but I would like to see evidence that we would have lost more than 29 seats. I would also have expected the Tories to have won. But if there had been majority Tory government I don’t think there would be one now and I think we would have more than 28 MPs now.
David
VAT would not have risen in 2010, but if there had been a majority Conservative government elected in a second election in 2010 or one in 2011 it would have been raised by now. The Work Capability Assessment was reformed and if it hadn’t it would have been worse. I believe that the changes to the sanction regime didn’t need to be passed in Parliament and so even a minority Conservative government could have implemented them, leading to the increase use of food banks. The freezing of tax credits would still have happened under a minority Conservative government and the bedroom tax would still have been introduced when there was a majority Conservative government. No one can really say if such a government would have allocated the same amount of funds to reduce some of the effects of the bedroom tax on some people as the Coalition government did. The number of government employees made redundant would not have been less.
Phyllis
Well since several of ‘the Lib Dem vote’ were mine and my friends’ and family’s, my view is as valid as yours. There may have been a few of the ‘give them a chance votes’ but there were also many supporting ‘ no more broken promises’ and ‘let’s have principled politics again’ votes.
Yes, in other words people whose support was fairly weak and so who could easily be persuaded to go elsewhere in another election.
You believe that the Liberal Democrats could have got whatever they wanted from a Parliament where they had 57 MPs out of a total of 650. I don’t, and I am sorry that I have been unable to persuade you otherwise, despite a lot of trying. So, you believe the Liberal Democrats were bad people because they could have got whatever they wanted but did not, well either that or they didn’t really want it.
OK then, could you please point out some situation in some other country which proves your point, where a party with less than 10% of the MPs is able to get whatever policies it likes implemented because no other party has a majority? Try looking at how well the Green Party did in Ireland when it was in coalition 2007-2011, for example.
Me
OK then, could you please point out some situation in some other country which proves your point,
That was not a rhetorical question, Phyllis. You were making serious charges, so I am asking you to give evidence for the the point you were making about how a small party can get anything it wants when there is no majority. I have given evidence the other way round. Where’s yours?
Matthew Huntbach 30th May ’15 – 8:55am
To try and help out Phyllis could I remind you of a local council example of a smaller party doing well out of an agreement with a much larger party.
The late Councillor Simon Knott, who contested every general election in the Barons Court/Hammersmith North/Hammersmith constituency between 1959 and 1987 as a Liberal or Independent Liberal.
He was elected to the council for the Broadway Ward on and off between the 1960s and 1980’s and, of if I recall correctly, held the balance of power with a Liberal Democrat group of just 2 (him and his ward colleague) for 8 years.
He kept the larger party in power but demanded chair of social services for himself (thus protecting spending on social services) as well as amongst other things achieving considerable spending and innumerable other advantages for the residents of his own ward.
He was a controversial figure (my wife served on the committee that looked into him being expelled from the party for either the second or the third time) and certainly not someone Imwould always approve of — but he knew how to screw the maximum out of a coalition deal. 🙂
In that respect he was the polar opposite of Nick Clegg, who over-promised and under-performed on such a massive scale. As you have often pointed out it was not the fact of Coalition between 2010 and 2015 that was the problem. It was the inept and amateurish approach of those who thought that parading around saying “we are a party of government now” thinking that just saying it would actually make it true.