I’m normally a big fan of the BBC’s Evan Davis. He knows how to make people squirm and we knew that he would do a thorough job on Nick Clegg tonight. And he did. All the difficult questions were in there, on tuition fees. that broken promises broadcast, was the coalition worth it when we’ve lost so much support. In fact, the tone was set right from the word go with “How does it feel to have gone from hero to zero?” which Nick took with his customary good grace.
No complaints about those tough policy questions. There was something else, though, which disappointed me. Davis showed a clip of Clegg speaking Dutch during the 2012 elections. Then he started to ask a series of questions around his family background, whether it was the fact that his mother was Dutch and his father from Russian heritage that made him look to other countries for different ways of doing things. He’d found a quote from pre 2010 where Nick had talked about how, as a child in the 70s, he felt that the Netherlands were doing things much better than we were. Surely everybody looks to other countries to see what we could learn from them? Just look at the most popular dishes on every menu in the country for evidence of that. I’ve always admired many Scandinavian ways of managing their public services and the way they’ve enforced the International Code on the Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes for a start.
Then Davis suggested to Nick that his privileged, multi-national background made him oblivious to the concerns people had about immigration. At this point, you could really see Nick’s irritation. I can’t blame him. I’d have been livid. He said that it was ridiculous of Davis to suggest that because his mother had a Dutch passport that he didn’t understand what people felt about pressure on public services. He could have added in that part of the reason people felt so scared about immigration was because the right wing press & the likes of Farage kept drip-feeding them pure poison which was not backed up by evidence. We know that immigration is a net benefit to us. The point Lynne Featherstone made on the LBC debate the other night was good – the places where UKIP has most support tend to be places with high unemployment but very little immigration and something that’s worth repeating as often as possible.
Davis moved on from there to question another funny Dutch idea that Clegg had taken on – would he make cannabis legal? Clegg impressively talked about how the evidence from Portugal among other places was that it was much better to give healthcare to those who were addicted to drugs rather than lock them in prison.
I didn’t expect Evan Davis of all people to start channelling Quentin Letts and the rest of the rabid right wing tabloid press. To be fair, he was nowhere near that bad, but that line of questioning was bizarre.
He was pretty pugnacious when he saw that people were complaining about his questions on Twitter:
Rubbish argument on Twitter about how bad it is that I questioned @nick_clegg‘s Britishness. If I had, it would have been, but I didn’t
— Evan Davis (@EvanHD) April 13, 2015
If you look at the responses, many people disagreed with him about how it came across, including our Stephen Tall, Liberal Reform’s Kavya Kaushik and I.
In general, it was a strong performance under pressure from Nick. He laid out a couple of red lines – that he wouldn’t agree to a Coalition with the Tories if they insisted on going through with their welfare cuts, and he wouldn’t agree to one with Labour without a properly defined plan, with dates, to deal with the deficit.
I was particularly glad when he elaborated on that “governing from the centre ground” phrase. I always think it’s meaningless without context. He added in liberal, decent and compassionate as the values which define who we are.
Here’s a selection of my tweets, but you can watch the whole interview on the iPlayer here.
Clegg: I’m an open-minded politician who thinks Britain needs to remain generous hearted & open to rest of world. #GE2015
— Caron Lindsay (@caronmlindsay) April 13, 2015
Clegg: it is counter-productive to put people who use drugs into prison while criminal gangs who peddle drugs go free. #GE2015
— Caron Lindsay (@caronmlindsay) April 13, 2015
Clegg Tories want to tell poorest to take cuts while giving benefits to richest. #ge2015
— Caron Lindsay (@caronmlindsay) April 13, 2015
Clegg: Lib Dems are plucky brave party who put country before party. Country in better shape now than it was in 2010. #GE2015
— Caron Lindsay (@caronmlindsay) April 13, 2015
Clegg: Lib Dems are plucky brave party who put country before party. Country in better shape now than it was in 2010. #GE2015
— Caron Lindsay (@caronmlindsay) April 13, 2015
Clegg: I hope fair minded folk who realise Lib Dems did right, fair & compassionate thing will vote for us. #ge2015
— Caron Lindsay (@caronmlindsay) April 13, 2015
Even Fraser Nelson was nice about him:
And he performed pretty well, in my opinion, coming across as decent and reasonable guy, using humour – and even anger, what it was called for.
I think Nick would have liked to have had the chance to talk more about things like his work on mental health and the way his channelling of extra funds for disadvantaged kids in school is increasing attainment already. He can be satisfied, though, with a robust defence of what the Liberal Democrats have brought to the table – most especially showing that coalition can work.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
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50 Comments
Great write up Caron. I think Fraser Nelson nails it – Clegg came across exceptionally well. One of his finest performances IMHO.
It doesn’t sound like a good move by Evan to go down that questioning route.
In other news: I am beginning to calm down after fuming for a few days over the dividend tax. My number one priority is my business, so it is why party loyalties can sometimes drop quickly if I see something threatening it.
A problem I see at the moment is centrist rhetoric and still left wing policies. But at times Clegg has been further to the right than me. So we will see.
An excellent performance by Nick. While I agree with those who say the Lib Dems will do better on May 7 than most predictions, it is without question that we will suffer losses. I for one will still be proud of what we decided in our thousands in 2010 at Birmingham to do for a country in severe peril which had just delivered a troubled and uncertain electoral verdict. This interview should also remind us why we should continue to be proud of Nick Clegg as the leader who “marched his troops towards the sound of gunfire” – as Jo Grimond had advocated 47 years earlier.
I was not impressed with lots of the questions and the way Evan Davis asked them. When Nick was talking about how bad the 1970’s were he didn’t say anything about the good points – no youth unemployment and full employment. OK was he remembering the electricity black out when he was 6 and he remembered the rubbish in the streets not being collected when he was 12. He did get upset over the question regarding his parents which was badly phrased and should have been focused on his privileged up-bringing.
I still believe he doesn’t understand why breaking the pledge on tuition fees is such a problem and not the same as a verbal promise from David Cameron. (I am coming round to the idea that there might be a good defence for breaking the pledge involving lots of details but I haven’t heard or seen it yet.)
On Newsnight there was a discussion of the interview and the idea that fair minded people would vote Liberal Democrat was derided, but Julia Goldsworthy put the (not heard much) counter argument of what would have happened if we had not gone into coalition at the next general election.
We can hope that those people who once voted for us in our target seats were hearing the message and not as Evan said only seeing the lips move.
When asked about more than £3bn worth of cuts to welfare Nick implied that our party wouldn’t support a penny more. Did I hear him say that when it became clear we were not going to get rid of the deficit in this Parliament he made sure the government accepted it and not get hung up with dates? But he wants to get hung up with dates with Labour!
Britain it seems has become an inward and backward looking place in an increasing globalised world.
“Surely everybody looks to other countries to see what we could learn from them? ”
If only.
I have seldom been so disgusted by a BBC interviewer as I was by Davies’ questioning. Not only his “You speak a foreign language, so you must be weird” line was beneath contempt, but his constant, unrestrained interrupting and posing one question after another before the person being questioned has had the slightest chance to answer (a technique constantly also applied by Kirsty Walk) made him seem amateurish and incompetent as an interviewer. I shall certainly not be watching any of the other interviews in the series NOR will I be watching “Newsnight” again. In fact, I am becoming ever more incensed by what the BBC does with my license fee money (e.g. wall to wall coverage of Farage and his lot even before they had one MP and after Lucas had been in post for years) that I think the whole organisation finally needs to be radically pruned back to one or two channels on TV and the radio (to keep it as a truly ‘national broadcaster’ (state funerals, Remembrance Sunday etc)) and the rest needs to be sold off/privatised. Like many people under 30 (and I am well in excess of that!), I find myself watching YouTube and internet-based TV more and more and yesterday’s totally pathetic performance by Davies will only encourage me to do this even more!
Performance is a good word, you perform. You act.
BBC News has for decades been dumbing-down their so-called journalism.
You should not expect anything better.
As one person remarked recently BBC News has become the Hello Magazine of news broadcasting.
Rather than cut £3 Billion from Welfare we should cut £3 Billion from the BBC’s budget.
It would still have £1 Billion left every year. Goodness knows what it spends £ Bilions on every year.
How much can it cost to broadcast forty year old episodes of Dad’s Army every Saturday night?
They have not had spend anything on training a new Dimbleby for fifty years.
Of course we could ask a lot of questions about the BBC and the inflated salaries of the bloated elite who run the unreformed state corporation, except they seem to be immune from the Freedom of Information Act. Perhaps Clegg should have asked Evan Davis a few questions?
As for political bias – we have less to complain about than some other parties as the article in the media section of The Guardian reported yesterday.
Analysis by Cardiff University details the percentages of airtime spent on each of the parties as follows –
Conservative ………………33.8%
Labour……………………………25.6%
Liberal Democrat………….15.4%
UKIP………………………………….9.8%
SNP……………………………………9.4%
Plaid Cymru………………………3.8%
Green…………………………………..2.2%
Dennis: “This interview should also remind us why we should continue to be proud of Nick Clegg as the leader who “marched his troops towards the sound of gunfire” – as Jo Grimond had advocated 47 years earlier.”
Jo Grimond was advocating engagement with the enemy when he talked about “marching his troops towards the sound of gunfire.” He was not advocating the Somme like slaughter of the party’s infantry over which Clegg has presided since 2007! Grimond was a Liberal Lion, Clegg on the other hand is the donkey that has lead the Liberal Lions into on defeat after another for SEVEN YEARS.
I was too young to remember Grimond as Leader, though I do remember his cameo re-appearance in the role in 1976.
Grimond inherited a party in terminal decline, revived it with new ideas and new activists while retaining most of the diehard membership. Clegg inherited a party with the highest number of MPs since the 1920s, a party that ran major cities all over the UK, and had been in government in Scotland and Wales. Since 2007 we’ve lost thousands of Councillors, loads of members, and the party is now moribund in large parts of the country.
I can accept that Clegg is not responsible for all the failure, just as Grimond was not esponsible for all the Liberal Party growth in 1956-67, but pleased don’t compare the politically naive and tactically inept Clegg with the man who did so much to re-establish post-war Liberalism a credible political force in the UK.
John Tilley: BBC News can still produce excellent journalism. I saw a report on the BBc News channel from the front line of the Ukraine a couple of days ago. Excellent coverage which showed just what this conflict is like for the poor people caught up in it. I can’t remember the reporter’s name but she was fluent in Ukrainian and Russian, and got peole to talk clearly about their experiences.
So the BBC can still do news…..so why is the political coverage as old and tired as its main presenters (Dimblebey, Andrew Neill etc?.). I think its largely the BBC is still too London-based and so its political coverage is and far too Westminster based. Its clear form the coverage of Scotland that most of its political journalists have no interest or underatanding in the place at all (and Northern Ireland seems to be regarded as on another planet!)
I don’t want to sound like the late Tony Benn, but I’m fed up with the constant speculation about numbers post May 7th, who might do a deal with who, and what must be ‘ruled out’ to ensure a stalemate happens. There is a complete lack of any analysis about key POLICIES. Much have the coverage has been about relatively small sums of money, and on one of the key spending decisions to face the next Pariament – Trident there has never been a proper analysis about what it will cost and what political or miliatary problem its supposed to protect us from!
@Steve Comer
Has anyone pointed out to you that the LibDems have been in government for the last five years? Jo Grimond was a great man, but he didn’t manage that.
John Tilley
“As for political bias – we have less to complain about than some other parties as the article in the media section of The Guardian reported yesterday.”
Actually I think the Lib Dems suffer very badly from the BBC bias but not for the reason most people think. The BBC groupthink shares a lot of common views with a lot of Lib Dems.
This creates a coverage where too many things Lib Dems believe are positive are simply reported as positive by the BBC, there is no critical discussion. This often results in opposing views being branded/treated as “nasty” and shouted down.
The cumulative effect is that there is very little coverage that would inform.
This damages liberal causes as firstly people are less informed than they would be but also when a Lib Dem espouses a view initial reactions are they are taking an “establishment line” rather than hold a rational view on an multi-faceted issue.
Added to that it makes BBC tv very dull.
Steve Comer
“BBC News can still produce excellent journalism”
A stopped clock is right twice a day.
I won’t argue with you, John, about journalism, but I will comment on the costs of the BBC, for whom I worked up to about 20 years ago. £1Billion was about the budget of the BBC in the 1980s. Salaries and costs were under considerable pressures. Commercial broadcasting and their friends lectured us about ‘BBC inefficiency’ at a time when we running 2 TV channels, regional TV and radio, national and local radio for less than the cost of ITV1 alone. The BBC was then largely run by internally trained management and engineers. I think certain undesirable trends started with the appointment of John Birt as Deputy DG around 1990, with his unprecedented personal tax arrangements and a sudden idea that externally imported management and outsourcing as much as possible were panaceas. That is when top management remuneration started to be ‘competitive’. This was pushed by Thatcher and subsequent governments. Nowadays, of course, to get a full TV experience you can find yourself paying as much in a quarter to Virgin, BT or Sky as you pay the BBC for a year.
London coverage of issues in the regions and nations may be lacking, but coverage of politics in, say, BBC Northern Ireland, is competent on matters there. (Certain Virgin customers can watch it in London if they like.)
Steve Comer 14th Apr ’15 – 8:43am
BBC News can still produce excellent journalism.
Steve, You are right, it CAN do. Unfortunately when it does, especially with reports from around the world, they are shoved off into some little watched corners of the schedule or unannounced onto one of the growing number of BBC Cable Channels with a viewership of 50,000.
Someone at the BBC on a salary ten times what an MP gets decides that the viewers should be served pap.
Hardly surprising that they dole out pap to the massess, as they themselves spend most evenings at the Opera or in a trendy London Theatre or going to Awards Ceremonies where they give each other prizes for being so fantastic.
Why would they care what the plebs watch on TV?
I do not object to programmes like ‘The Voice says Strictly Come get me out of the Great British Jungle Bake Off’ –
but Murdoch’s Sky News is probably at a higher level of journalism than the BBC.
One of the best TV News programmes available to those who get Virgin Media is the rolling news from France 24.
It just shows that calm, rational, informed journalism is possible. I am told that it is produced on a budget which is a tiny fraction of the BBC equivalent.
Chris 14th Apr ’15 – 8:52am ……..Has anyone pointed out to you that the LibDems have been in government for the last five years? Jo Grimond was a great man, but he didn’t manage that………
And, judging by the results, another spell ‘in government’ could see the party completely disappear! The expression, “The operation was a success, but the patient died” comes to mind…
Ian Sanderson
Ian, you are of course right to point out that – “..Nowadays, of course, to get a full TV experience you can find yourself paying as much in a quarter to Virgin, BT or Sky as you pay the BBC for a year.”
I guess it is down to taste and personal preference but I think paying for Virgin Cable TV is well worth every penny.
Most of what I chose to pay enables me to watch the football and as such the subscription is a lot cheaper than travelling to a match every week and paying for a ticket in a Premiership Ground.
My wife is an avid fan of the big cycle tours in Italy, Spain, France etc which are reliably available on an almost daily basis on Eurosport. Until recently these major sporting events wtached by millions across the glbe were never even mentioned anywhere on the BBC.
Since 2012 they do get a brief mention on the BBC who often get facts wrong and are sending out reporters who know more about athletics or rugby than they knew about cycling, interviewing Olympic Cyclists whose experience outside a velodrome is limited and who have never been on a Tour).
There is also the irony that some BBC Channels (TV and Radio) are only available to me because I subscribe to Virgin Cable.
Expats. When you’ve built your brand (wrongly in my view) as the home of the anti establishment protest vote for the proceeding 50 years it’s inevitable that you will alienate that support if you enter government. That would have happened once the decision was made to enter coalition whoever was leader. It just happened to be Clegg ( and let us thank god it wasn’t Huhne).
Paxman’s last three questions to Ed Miliband were basically ‘why are you so weird?’ weren’t they? I think it was a good question clumsily asked and certainly not disgusting (NB. I thought Clegg’s alcoholic analogy yesterday was several degrees worse) but overall a good showing.
Personally I find Evan Davies a total switch off. he does not ask questions but makes long statements, talks over people and seems more intent in getting his view of the world across. He was the same in the morning on Radio 4. Once he appears I switch to Sky News and its press comments section. So far as Clegg is concerned, the average voter does not listen to him anyway, and yes who actually watches Newsnight, not the average voter. So does it really matter?
@Steve Comer
Grimond was not just talking asbout engagement with the enemy. His main thrust was that the (then) beards and sandals brigade needed to engage with the reality of politics – to be where it’s at, he might have said in 1960s language.
Too many posts on LDV seem to hark fondly back to the days when we were well meaning nobodies and too many Clegg criticisms are about the inevitable consequences of what Grimond wanted but could not then succeed in leading us into.
Tabman 14th Apr ’15 – 9:41am……..Expats. When you’ve built your brand (wrongly in my view) as the home of the anti establishment protest vote for the proceeding 50 years it’s inevitable that you will alienate that support if you enter government. That would have happened once the decision was made to enter coalition whoever was leader…….
So doing a complete ‘U-turn’ on the major policies you’d campaigned on (NHS, tuition fees, etc.) played no part in losing support?
Look at the polls, expats. The support evaporated as soon as the coalition deal was done.
Denis “Too many posts on LDV seem to hark fondly back to the days when we were well meaning nobodies and too many Clegg criticisms are about the inevitable consequences of what Grimond wanted but could not then succeed in leading us into.”
Nail. Head. Hit.
And most of the people making them are boomers.
I thought Nick handled Evan Davis’ narrow and aggressive approach to the interview very well. It confirmed something I’ve thought for some time; Mr Davis is nothing like as talented as he thinks he is. He should also consider buying longer socks or employing the services of a competent tailor. I’m sure he could afford it with my TV licence fee as one of millions of contributions. Unlike some previous commentators on this site, I will be watching the other debates to establish just how biased (or not) Davis is.
“He should also consider buying longer socks or employing the services of a competent tailor.”
Wow! Equality rears its head!
Some actual criticism of male attire!
Caron, perhaps you might start a thread on the Conservative plan to sell off Housing Association properties….To my mind this is the most despicable part of a despicable manifesto. The idea that tenants in poor private landlord properties will see their taxes used to allow those in good HA homes to buy them is a sign of the “Thatcher” mindset still behind in Cameron’s “Caring Conservative” mask!
” He should also consider buying longer socks or employing the services of a competent tailor. ”
Perhaps they’re hooked up on one of his piercings
Was Grimmond’s intention to lead the party in to a coalition without any plan to handle and mitigate the (inevitable) negative impacts of that?
D McKay
The questions being asked are inappropriate. “Are you weird” are you British enough” and whatever they will ask Cameron.
This is the first time I expect some UKIP leaning people I know to be sympathetic to Clegg.
What the actual question that needs answering from the leaders of all the UK wide parties is (Con, Lab, LibDem, UKIP, Green): What is your experience of normal people’s lives? They all went to very good schools, they all entered upper middle class occupations, none of them seem to have taken real risks, had serious setbacks or had to seriously change tack. Life has been very safe and easy for them.
The “easy life” of all the party leaders is not reflective of normal people. They have had some “token” experiences, Cameron took a job doing PR for ITV so he could say he worked in the private sector, Milliband tries to claim his was a “rough inner-city school” when that is a joke. If you compare them to party leaders of the late 20th century they lack anything that looks like real world experience.
I imagine that is what the TV interviewers are trying to get at but I’m not sure they know that, as these interviewers are not much different.
Psi – I agree wholeheartedly with your comment regarding life experience – another commenter (maybe Matthew Huntbach?) has previously made the point that Westminster journalist only put forward potential leaders like them (i.e. white, male, publicly educated).
However if the Conservative campaign is about Miliband being weird (or a backstabber) journalists will follow . Similarly I think the question last night was a reaction to UKIP arguments that immigration is fine for elites in North London but what of the working class – that it involved Clegg speaking Dutch (and the intro to an episode of ‘who do you think you are’) was in my view clumsy but I don’t think indicative of anything sinister.
“UKIP arguments that immigration is fine for elites in North London”
Clegg lives in Putney which, last time I checked, is saaf of the river 😉
“Personally I find Evan Davies a total switch off.” [theakes 14th Apr ’15 – 9:46am]
I do agree with the sentiment, even though at times Evan does have something to say. “The Bottom Line” had great potential and at times it did deliver, but I used to get irritated by the way Evan seemed to only really require the guests to node in agreement with him.
However I do think that it is correct to ask questions about a person’s background and life experience and how this could help or hinder them; Although Jeremy Paxman would of asked the question straight out and waited for the response.
I was one who campaigned hard to persuade Nick to apologise for the tuition fees pledge, which he did. Now I think he should take questions on it in his stride. He should not relate any answer to a question on it to anything else. His response should be “I made a serious mistake and I apologised for it. People are always saying that politicians should apologise when they make a mistake. I did make a mistake. I won’t do it again. If people are not fair minded enough to forgive a mistake, then they should perhaps consider voting for another party.”
David P – Sorry, but I think the fact that you use the word mistake shows that you don’t fully understand the magnitude of what Nick did in the eyes of so many people and why it has been so damaging to liberal democracy in this country. As for the suggestion that people are not being fair minded, the comment “An end to broken promises” springs to mind.
Well, I am rather interested in Evan Davis on Newsnight. He does normally have an internationalist view of the world.
I watched him interview some Tories early on and learned quite a bit about them in the way they answered questions.
But it is going to be interesting seeing how Cameron etc are questioned.
I think the Mail stuff has made us too sensitive.
David Evans
“you don’t fully understand the magnitude of what Nick did in the eyes of so many people and why it has been so damaging to liberal democracy in this country.”
I don’t think it is the “magnitude” that is the killer, it is the simplicity. Manifestos are long boring documents filled with waffle, having to change tack on particular items are expected.
The “pledge” was short, simple leaving no wiggle room.
Most other “broken promises” claims don’t cut through with the general public any more than any other party or a general cynicism with politics. If it was an abandonment of the manifesto policy it would be hard to make it stick it first appeared on page 38 of the 2010 manifesto but in an act of hubris hundreds of candidates signed a short pledge and were photographed with them, that sticks.
David Pollard
On the basis of the simplicity there is nothing that Nick can do that can cut through the simplicity of that act. There are many positives to talk about but they take time, people need time to consider if they think they are all down to the LibDems, it takes a lot less time to think “you can’t even keep one promise” no amount of apologising will work.
The best that can be done is to push the positives, focus on the strong holds and after the next election Nick will stand down. That will be the time that a fresh look sill start. The LibDems had to keep Nick up to this election, as to ditch the leader after there had been some tough choices in government would have made the party look like it couldn’t handle tough choices, but he will also have to go after the election to start to wipe the slate clean on the tuition fees stain.
“he will also have to go after the election to start to wipe the slate clean on the tuition fees stain.”
If that is the case, i hope he is followed swiftly by those who saddled us with such a ridiculous policy in the first place.
Tabman
The policy was ridiculously, the pledge was far worse.
The key is to learn from mistakes, putting a middle class benefit above everything else in an election is not sensible.
@David Evans
“Sorry, but I think the fact that you use the word mistake shows that you don’t fully understand the magnitude of what Nick did”
Well, quite. It would be a “mistake” if he’d meant to head for the No lobby but accidentally took a wrong turn.
I only saw the last few minutes, and was disappointed Davies didn’t ask the question I’d like to ask: How exactly is Ed Miliband culpable for the economic crash?
Can anyone here answer it?
Ed was a “Special Advisor” to Gordon Brown. So his fingerprints are on it, albeit smaller ones than Gordon’s.
Indeed Nick, Ed was “Special advisor” to the man in government in charge of the Treasury while Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Barclays, RBS et al were messing it all up.
@ Tabman
“If that is the case, i hope he is followed swiftly by those who saddled us with such a ridiculous policy in the first place.”
Our policy was not the pledge. The pledge was a NUS pledge. Our policy was to phrase out tuition fees over a number of years (it might even have been six years). However some people at HQ decided that all our candidates including our MPs who were standing for re-election should sign the NUS pledge to get the student vote.
Cameron should have been empty chaired. This election is a total shambles in terms of politicians being held to account by the media.
@David Evans
But the crash emanated from the US, and was caused by the failure of private companies. Gordon Brown’s role was tiny, Miliband’s even more so (if at all).
Even if one accepted that Miliband was guilty of any failings re. the crash whatsoever, I don’t think that anybody would seriously suggest that he acted deliberately to do so in the way that Clegg deliberately broke his pledge. So what on earth is Clegg on about?
Tabman 14th Apr ’15 – 12:27pm
Clegg lives in Putney which, last time I checked, is saaf of the river
You should check again, Tabman. If you were to travel in a straight line from Hampton Court to Putney you would go in a north easterly directon, and have to cross the River Thames to get to Putney.
Here in Kingston we are to the East of The River Thames which flows from South to North, but nobody would describe it as “East” London.
Whatever his postal address, Nick Clegg lives in The Westminster Village.
The fact hat he speaks Dutch to his mum and Spanish to his children, is one of the few things that he has in common with ordinary Londoners; which is that none of us are very “English”.
This is probably why UKIP got virtually no councillors elected in London last May.
I am fed up with the constant references to Tuition fees. Yes it was political incompetence on a grand scale but political incompetence is not the same thing incompetent government. There is a respone.
Firstly the increase in University Students increased the Tertiary slice of the overall education budget (unless it increased overall to accomodate tertiary increase which I do not recall) with an consequent reduction in the proportion left for infant/primary/secondary/collge sectors. Than was why Labour called for the Brown Report and, like Muttley, waited for the consequenses..
According to my LA Director of Education Increased investment in early years and primary education is the most effective use of funding to improve outcomes. It is particularly important that socially disavantaged kids aren’t left behind. Clegg deserves great credit for both the Pupil Premium and the infant free meals policies ; an enlightened and brave attempt to redress the balance.
@brianD – “I am fed up with the constant references to Tuition fees”. You’re entitled to be fed up, and have your own criteria for judging the performance of the LDs in government.
However, others are equally entitled to their own criteria, which may include “how well did the LDs in government live up to their 2010 pledge to abolish tuition fees”.
David Cameron handled Evan Davis better than Nick Clegg and managed to stop Evan asking lots of questions in one go and so managed to answer them and not leave them in the air as Nick did. It annoys me that David Cameron can list our tax cuts and our pupil premium as his achievements. It is far too late for us to point out that we modified the Tories deficit reduction plans and economic policies so he gets the credit for them unchallenged.
Evan didn’t list David Cameron’s background as a prelude to asking about the Tories being seen as out of touch by some voters.
It seemed a better natured interview with Cameron and I felt he came over better than Nick Clegg.
Michael BG 15th Apr ’15 – 8:20pm ….I thought Davis was far too deferential in his attitude to Cameron…As for answering questions…Dave did his usual PMQ stunt of answering his own….