Tag Archives: clegg+1

Clegg’s first year: Clegg on Clegg | Tall on Clegg | Land on Clegg | Littlewood on Clegg | Clegg on YouTube

It’s a cliché that the leader of Her Majesty’s official opposition has the most difficult job in British politics; unusually the cliché is wrong. For sure, David Cameron’s in an unenviable position (and not just because he’s a Tory); utterly powerless, the only weapons he has in his artillery are words. But at least those words are listened to; debated and disagreed with; quoted and used against him. They are not ignored.

Nick Clegg, the leader of the third largest party in the UK, the Liberal Democrats, does not (yet) enjoy the frustration of being the Leader of the Opposition. Inbetween elections when newspapers and broadcasters conspire to pretend that Britain has only two political parties, Lib Dem leaders must battle for every mili-second of publicity. They can look forward to endless dissection of their most minor gaffes; and learn to realise that their serious speeches are judged too dull by meedja execs in thrall to the myth that citizens just can’t be arsed to pay attention to anything that smacks of serious.

So exactly how do we judge the success (or otherwise) of Nick Clegg, who today begins his second year as our leader?

To be honest, I think it’s pretty easy. Nick Clegg as leader is exactly what the vast majority of us – discounting those few who thought he was the Lib Dem Messiah, and those few for whom Nick can do no right – thought he would be: he’s a work in progress.

Nick has immense intellectual strength and curiosity. He’s actually a policy wonk, which many might regard as a handicap for a political leader, who is often expected to remain at arms-length from the detail (a la Blair). I find Nick’s hunger for new ideas one of his most endearing qualities. If either Gordon Brown or David Cameron had even half Nick’s questing drive, political debate in this country would be so much more mature than it is.

But, as so often, there is a flip-side to Nick’s boyish questioning: his habit of ‘thinking out loud’ sometimes results in fuzzy communication, most notably when he appeared to suggest that the “vast bulk” of the party’s £20 billion public spending savings would be ear-marked for tax cuts. Nick’s chief of staff Danny Alexander was hastily despatched to these very pages to try and ventriloquise the party out of Nick’s mis-speaking; but the damage was done, and the confusion has been hard to un-do.