A year ago, Nick Clegg’s career appeared to be pretty much over. Some even wondered if he night have been upset to have clung on to his Sheffield Hallam seat.
Now, former critics are starting to be glad that he is there. He is by far the most experienced politician in the country on both international trade and how the European Union works.
This week has seen the latest in a fairly long line of articles, which started with the Mystic Clegg stuff in June, suggesting that Nick Clegg’s star is in the ascendancy again. The New Statesman, of all things, was even nice about him.
Clegg has previously voiced the hope that a botched attempt at hard Brexit might trigger a desire for an alternative to Tory rule among the British people. For him personally, Brexit is the perfect issue upon which to position himself as a voice of reason. He has the experience, the gravitas and the passion to help win back some of the political credibility he lost during the dark days of the coalition and the tuition fees debacle. Whether he can ever fully lose the traitor tag remains to be seen, but his intervention on Brexit will be welcome among the 16.1 million people who didn’t vote for any kind of Brexit, let alone a hard one.
Over at the Huffington Post, Beth Leslie suggests that Brexit means that it is time to forgive the Liberal Democrats.
Four million UKIP voters in 2015 elected just one MP, but they snowballed an idea that made Brexit a reality. Why couldn’t we centrists do the same? And with the money, resources and national recognition of an established party, the Liberal Democrats are the best-placed vehicle for us to try to do so.
Tim Farron and Nick Clegg have both been brilliant on Brexit all the way through. Tim’s PMQ got the PM to admit she doesn’t give two hoots about the nearly half the country who voted to remain and Clegg continues to work with others to fight the parliamentary campaign against a hard brexit that nobody voted for.