Tag Archives: nick clegg

Adam Robertson

In Defence of Nick

By Adam Robertson | Wed 28th May 2025 - 2:01 pm

Nick Clegg, is arguably the best modern Liberal Democrat British Politician by virtue through taking the party into power in 2010. You may be thinking why does he need defending within our own party? That is a good question considering if he was in the Conservative and Labour Parties, he would be feted (apart from Tony Blair due to Iraq) for taking the party into Government for the first time since the Second World War. Yet  Mathew Hulbert suggests it would be wise for him to make fewer public interventions as possible, despite being a former Deputy Prime Minister.

Why do some members of our party feel this way about Nick Clegg, considering the Coalition was ten years ago? The British public seem to have reluctantly accepted that the Coalition cuts were necessary compared to the current Labour Government ones. As Mathew says in his article, Nick did help to bring in Equal Marriage with Lynne Featherstone, but Nick also helped to bring in the Pupil Premium, lifted three million people out of Income Tax, and restored the link between pensions and earnings. I can go on, but the main achievements can be found here. 

Admittedly, I accept that the Party lost 49 seats at the 2015 General Election. It is clear that the negotiating team could have got a better deal from the Conservatives, particularly on constitutional and political reform, and on the issue of Europe. Let us not get started on the issue of tuition fees, which should have been handled better especially the politics of it, although I think Nick is not completely to blame here. 

However, it is only fair to assess the legacy of the Coalition, when both constituent parts are out of Government completely. The Financial Times has pointed out that we could benefit from the coalition legacy, as Labour faces the reality of governing. 

Nick may not have  broken the mould’ in challenging the Conservative and Labour dominance within our electoral system during his time as Leader, although I argue even more important was that he could see that the political axis was changing from the traditional economic axis of redistribution v tax cuts, to a cultural axis of liberalism v authoritarianism. 

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Mathew Hulbert

Mathew on Monday – Will we nail the final nail into the Tory coffin?

By Mathew Hulbert | Mon 26th May 2025 - 4:32 pm

Here lies the deceased. The Conservative Party, 1834-2025.

Or, to borrow from a certain former Prime Minister who encouraged the use of a handbag in less than diplomatic negotiations,

This is an ex-parrot. It is not merely stunned. It has ceased to be, expired, and gone to meet its maker. It is a parrot no more. It has run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is a late parrot.

That of course was Margaret Thatcher speaking to the Tory Party conference, about the Lib Dems and our then new party symbol, “a bird of some kind” as she described it, in 1990.

Of course ironically it would in fact be herself who was (politically) defenestrated just a few weeks later when her own Cabinet turned on her and she stood down as Conservative leader and Prime Minister. Be careful what you wish for, some might say.

If any party knows about coming very close to its own political death it is the Lib Dems and our predecessor parties, sometimes reduced to just a handful of MPs. But, as our former leader Tim Farron likes to say, we Lib Dems are like cockroaches… almost impossible to kill us off.

It’s taken a decade since we were given a right royal kick in 2015 after our first time in UK-wide government since Liberal leader Archibald Henry Macdonald Sinclair served as the Secretary of State for Air in Churchill’s war time national Cabinet, but under Ed Davey’s steady leadership, punctuated by the occasional cringeworthy stunt to garner attention from a Westminster press pack who seem to have permanently forgotten that we even exist, we are back in a strong position on which we can and must build.

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Paul Walter

Podcast catch-up: Nick Clegg talks with Campbell and Stewart

By Paul Walter | Tue 24th September 2024 - 8:55 am

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Just in case you haven’t listened to this (and apologies from me – I am rather slow on the uptake here), in July Nick Clegg sat down with Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart for their “Leading” Podcast series:

Part 1 is entitled “Nick Clegg: Coalition, Cameron and Chaos”. (Link is the Podcast on Apple Podcasts)

Part 2 is called “Nick Clegg: Biden, Brexit, and kicking Trump off Facebook“.

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Mary Reid

Munira Wilson challenges Government on free school meals

By Mary Reid | Fri 30th December 2022 - 10:08 am

It was Nick Clegg who introduced free school meals for all 5 to 7 year olds, while the Conservative partners in the coalition, notably George Osborne, resisted the proposal.

You might be surprised to learn that school meals date back over a century, although access and the quality of provision was variable until the 1944 Education Act. That required all Local Education Authorities to provide school meals for all, free to those who met certain poverty criteria, plus free school milk for all. It also laid down nutritional requirements for the meals.

Since then the requirements have been gradually eroded, in spite of numerous research findings which show the health and economic benefits, as well as educational ones, of providing universal access to nutritious meals to all children.

Maggie Thatcher was famously tagged “Milk snatcher” when, as Education Secretary, she removed free school milk in 1971. Then the Education Act 1980 removed the requirement to provide meals to all children unless they qualified for free meals. School canteens were given over to private contractors or simply turned into teaching spaces, packed lunches became the norm and nutritional guidelines withered.

It took a celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver, to lead the campaign for good food in schools and for a while things started to look better for the health of the nation’s children. But by 2019 60% of schools were still not meeting food standards.

And it took a celebrity footballer, Marcus Rashford, to shame the Government into extending free school meals into the holiday periods during Covid.

But it is a constant struggle between those who care about the impact of poverty on education versus those who worry about the “nanny state”.

Munira Wilson, our Education spokesperson, has consistently challenged the Government on its current provision of free school meals, achieving front page coverage.  Her latest campaign is seemingly quite a modest one – to ensure that all children who are eligible for free school meals under the current rules actually get them. It seems, astonishingly, that nearly a quarter of a million children go without because they haven’t been registered. She claims this should be an automatic process rather than one relying on opt-ins.

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Paul Walter

Sir Nick Clegg lecture: “The end of global internet”

By Paul Walter | Fri 28th May 2021 - 10:40 am

The Shirley Williams Lectures are now getting well into their stride. On Wednesday evening we had the honour of welcoming Nick Clegg direct from Atherton, California USA.

It was the day of Facebook’s AGM, so a busy one for Nick.

I was very impressed by Nick’s lecture, which was delivered flawlessly from notes.

After paying a very warm and heartfelt tribute to Baroness Williams, Nick outlined how he regards 1989 as the key year in his life. The Berlin Wall fell and Tim Berners-Lee invented the Worldwide Web.

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NewsHound

Observer: Clegg and Alexander have “sold their souls”

By NewsHound | Sun 16th May 2021 - 9:28 am

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Writing in the Observer, Will Hutton writes an excoriating assessment under the title: “Cameron, Alexander, Osborne, Clegg: how the austerity ‘quad’ sold their souls”.

Particularly relevant quotes include:

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Tom Morrison

Shirley Williams Lectures launched to promote ideas exchange

By Tom Morrison | Fri 18th December 2020 - 10:02 am

Liberal Democrat members and other progressives can now join an exclusive lecture club to challenge and engage with some of the most original and innovative thinkers of our time.

Launched today, The Shirley Williams Lectures will offer a platform to specialists from a range of fields to share their ideas and vision for the future.  Club members will be given the opportunity to consider and discuss how we can tackle some of the biggest questions facing the world.

Whether it is concepts for a new style of politics, views on the UK’s business outlook, the future of international sport or matters of global ethics, the lecture themes will offer fresh, thought-provoking and contemporary insight.

The lecture series will be delivered online and comprise one event per month during 2021.  Party leader Sir Ed Davey will be kick-starting the programme by outlining his thoughts on the post-COVID economy at the inaugural lecture on 28 January.

Other confirmed speakers include Juergen Maier CBE, who, on 26 February will be taking a deep dive into post-Brexit trade, Baroness Benjamin DBE DL, Olympic medallist and track cyclist Callum Skinner, and Sir Nick Clegg.

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Mary Reid

Review: ‘I never promised you a rose garden’ by Jonny Oates

By Mary Reid | Thu 29th October 2020 - 6:42 pm

Last week Jonny Oates published his memoir “I never promised you a rose garden” (BiteBack). Jonny is best known to most Lib Dems as Nick Clegg’s Chief of Staff during Coalition, and as our current spokesperson for Energy and Climate Change in the House of Lords.

Many years ago Jonny was the twenty-something political assistant to the Council group in Kingston, and I first met him then, so I skimmed through the book to find the chapter where he talks about people I know. It is, amazingly, halfway through, so there was obviously a lot I didn’t know about him.

I started the book again, and read it properly, and it is certainly worth doing so. By the time you get to the account of Ed Davey’s first, and astonishing, election as MP for Kingston & Surbiton in 1997, you can understand how Jonny, as agent, alongside the legendary Belinda Eyre-Brook, achieved the impossible, in overturning a 15,000 Tory majority.  This is a man of deep integrity who is quietly determined, possessing the qualities of a team leader (but never a bully) and a sharp political mind, honed in the extraordinary politics of post-apartheid South Africa.

But as a teenager he was conflicted. He writes candidly about his own mental health and his struggles to come to terms with who he was, to the extent that he ran away to Ethiopia at the age of 15 and contemplated suicide. He tells us about the good people who came into his life and guided him with compassion, and the recognition that his parents’ love was unconditional after all.

Of course, Lib Dem Voice readers will be particularly interested in what he has to say about his time as Director of General Election Communications for the 2010 Election, and subsequently as Chief of Staff to the Deputy Prime Minister. Jonny gives us a slightly different, but not contradictory, perspective on the Coalition negotiations from those of David Laws and others.

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The Voice

Paddy “was the most heartfelt person I have known” – Nick Clegg

By The Voice | Sun 23rd December 2018 - 9:28 am

Nick Clegg has paid tribute to “his” leader, the man who brought him into the party and then supported him throughout his career and throughout the darkest days of the coalition:

My heart goes out to Jane and Paddy’s whole family.

Paddy was the reason I entered politics. He was the reason I became a liberal. And he became a lifelong mentor, friend and guide. Much will, rightly, be said about him in the days ahead. He was a soldier, a diplomat, a writer, a leader, a campaigner, a servant of his constituents, and an international statesman.

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Humphrey Hawksley

Clegg and Alexander are pioneers for global Liberal Democracy

By Humphrey Hawksley | Mon 29th October 2018 - 8:15 am

Let us put aside for a moment the cries of greed, hypocrisy and astonishment at Nick Clegg’s decision to take his job at Facebook and examine what it means for the cause of liberal democracy.

Facebook, together with other social media outlets, is one of two new forces upending the world order and the way we think.
The other is authoritarianism, led by China, where many countries now see government not accountable to an electorate as preferable to the muddled unpredictability of Western-style democracy.

The Liberal Democrats have two of their most senior figures in each of those camps.

Two years before Nick Clegg …

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News Meerkat

Nick Clegg to move to 1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park, California

By News Meerkat | Fri 19th October 2018 - 5:58 pm

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The Guardian reports:

Facebook has hired Sir Nick Clegg, the former UK deputy prime minister, as its head of global policy and communications.

Clegg, 51, will join Facebook as it struggles to cope with mounting political pressure over issues including fake news, data protection and the threat of government regulation.

The former head of the Liberal Democrats will move to Silicon Valley in January.

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Caron Lindsay

Two years on….

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 23rd June 2018 - 7:30 am

So what were you doing two years ago today?

June 23rd will forever go down in history and not just for being Mary Reid’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Mary, by the way.

It was a beautiful day in Livingston. I spent the day handing out leaflets, wandering round the college doing what I could to persuade people to vote. We had a good reception. We’d spent the weeks leading up to it campaigning hard and were exhausted after a gruelling Scottish election campaign. The SNP, bless them, were knackered and barely lifted a finger.

The Livingston band of helpers went rogue in the last week. We had been told that we had to hand out leaflets and not knock on any doors. We completely ignored that instruction and actually did some talking to people and I think it was a productive use of our time because we did change minds.

We didn’t lose in Scotland. Every single constituency voted to Remain, but I think we could have done better than the 62-38 result we got. We wouldn’t have found 1.3 million but we could certainly have narrowed the gap by some margin.

While we were ahead reasonably comfortably at our count in West Lothian, results from elsewhere made us wince and swear. Every so often my friend would ring and there would be much mutual swearing. In every election result there are so many what ifs. What if it had been a nice day in London and the storms and floods hadn’t depressed turnout? What if the Remain campaign hadn’t been so eye-meltingly, frustratingly awful?

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Caron Lindsay

Review: Global Soul – Nick Clegg’s latest podcast with author Elif Shafak

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 21st June 2018 - 10:25 am

The latest in Nick Clegg’s Anger Management series of podcasts is my favourite in the series so far, by a long way.

He talked to writer, feminist and campaigner Elif Shafak. I was so impressed with her that I immediately went and bought a whole load of her books.

She talked about the importance of appealing to emotions, of the very real threat to democracy posed by populists across the world, of the threat of majoritarianism – where the rights of marginalised groups are ignored.

She talked of the importance of dialogue and not writing off people who have a different view, of …

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Caron Lindsay

Review: Anger Management Episode 4 – Nick Clegg in conversation with Harriet Harman

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 1st June 2018 - 11:55 am

The other day, I raised an eyebrow that Nick Clegg had so far only interviewed white men on his Anger Management podcast.

Yesterday, a fair few of my Christmases arrived together when a new episode had one of my favourite politicians, Harriet Harman in conversation with Nick. I was going to say that she was the first elected politician he’d had on, but then I remembered he’d had Farage who is pocketing a fortune as a part-time MEP. I haven’t quite had the spoons to listen to that one yet.

It was a good chat with a couple of newsworthy moments – particularly when he asked her if she was interested in becoming Speaker and she said she wasn’t going to talk about it because there wasn’t a vacancy. I’m reading that as a “yes” if there should be a vacancy, but I always have been an optimist.

I will remember this podcast mostly for its missed opportunities though. I just wish both of them hadn’t been quite so polite. I know it’s about anger so there’s almost an obligation to be reasonable, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a bit of fun.

I was willing Harriet (even though it was obviously pre-recorded and there was therefore no point) to ask Nick why he hadn’t put a woman in the Cabinet in 5 years as Deputy PM.

When Harriet talked about how she had not time for faux anger, if I’d have been Nick I’d have brought up a) the mockrage from Labour at every coalition cut when they would have made most of them themselves and b) that time Harriet let herself down by referring to Danny Alexander as a ginger rodent. Certainly she was quick to apologise at the time and then had the good grace to show up when the beer that was created after that was served in the House of Commons. It just might have been interesting to go through what goes through your head when you say something you shouldn’t. We all do it and it might have been interesting to discuss it well after the event in a calmer setting.

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Caron Lindsay

Nick Clegg’s podcast interview with George Osborne didn’t help me manage my anger

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 27th May 2018 - 9:32 am

I used a car journey yesterday to listen to Nick Clegg’s podcast, Anger Management, yesterday. I was a bit perturbed that he’s only been talking to white men of a certain age so far, but am reassured that this is going to change soon, with Harriet Harman and Elif Safak coming up.

I decided that yesterday’s sunshine was too lovely to be spoiled by listening to the chat with Nigel Farage, so I listened to the Know your Frenemy chat with George Osborne instead.

I still have some time for the coalition and the things that the Liberal Democrats brought to the table that did make life better for people – better mental health care, shared parental leave, extra money for disadvantaged kids in school and the like, ending child detention for immigration, all the green stuff we did and our work on international development. I am also acutely aware of the mistakes that we made, particularly around immigration (the minimum income requirement to bring your non British spouse in for a start) and cutbacks in social security that caused real misery. Sometimes stopping the Tories doing their worst just wasn’t enough.

So the conversation between Nick and George, a reuniting of half The Quad who made all the decisions during the coalition years, was peppered with several instances of Nick telling George how much he’d infuriated him. Hearing about Osborne’s upbringing was interesting, with his Labour voting mum and Conservative inclined father.

They had an interesting conversation about the media with Osborne, the newspaper editor, speaking up for newspapers and for regulation of  social media. 

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Caron Lindsay

How can the Government proceed with Brexit if there’s evidence the public has changed its mind?

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 26th May 2018 - 9:04 am

Of all the constitutional crises talked about round Brexit, surely the biggest is taking an irrevocable step that doesn’t have the backing of the British people at the point that it is made. If the UK exits the European Union on 29th March next year, it’s starting to look as if that move will not have the backing of the electorate.

Prospect magazine has analysis of YouGov polls conducted over the past two years which suggests that Remain would win a referendum on the Brexit deal. That surely means that the Government’s full-speed-ahead, devil-may-care approach to Brexit has no democratic …

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The Voice

LibLink: Nick Clegg – Elected representatives will do the right thing on Brexit

By The Voice | Sun 8th April 2018 - 7:35 pm


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In the Financial Times (registration needed), Nick Clegg writes very realistically about the prognosis for Brexit:

Public opinion has shifted a little in favour of the Remain camp, and a lot towards wider concern about the impact of Brexit on the NHS and the economy. But it remains firmly enveloped in an indifference towards the details of the negotiations, and a sullen belief that politicians should just “get on with it”. Advertising campaigns by anti-Brexit groups will not, on their own, shift opinion in a big way.

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Caron Lindsay

WATCH: Nick Clegg say that Brexit is a monumental waste of time

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 14th March 2018 - 4:25 pm

From the Belfast Telegraph, watch the Cleggster speak at a Conference in Bath about social mobility and Brexit:

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Paul Walter

LibLink: Nick Clegg – British cross-border supply chains will be strangled by hard Brexit red tape

By Paul Walter | Sat 10th February 2018 - 9:47 am

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Writing in the i newspaper, Nick Clegg says that any chance of Soft Brexit has been killed off by Theresa May. Instead, MPs will be faced with the choice of a hard Brexit or no Brexit.

Nick Clegg hits the nail on the head when he describes how modern cross-border supply chains will be destroyed by a hard Brexit:

It cannot be said enough: the Brexit this Government is determined to impose on this country cannot under any circumstances avoid the introduction of extensive new barriers, costs and frictions to trade with our largest trading partners.

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The Voice

BREAKING: Swinson and Clegg honoured

By The Voice | Fri 29th December 2017 - 10:51 pm

Lib Dem MP for East Dunbartonshire, Jo Swinson, has been awarded a CBE in the New Year’s Honours list.

The rumours were true, about Nick, then.

 

Elizabeth Riches, who came within two votes of winning North East Fife in June becomes an MBE. She was a councillor for many years and was depute leader of Fife Council from 2007-12.

Depute Leader of our group on York City Council, Ann Reid gets an MBE for services to local govermnent.

Another Scot, Graham Garvie, former Convener of the Borders Council and now a member of the Lib Dems’ Federal International Relations Committee, gets an OBE.

Reg Barry,  Lib Dem Councillor on the Isle of Wight gets a BEM for services to the community.

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Caron Lindsay

Will Nick Clegg be getting a knighthood at the weekend?

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 26th December 2017 - 10:28 am

The papers are full of reports that The Cleggster is getting a knighthood in the New Year Honours. The right wing tabloids in particular are particularly enraged at this award for an “arch remainer.” The Mail even devotes a separate article to the question of whether Miriam Gonzalez Durantez will use the title “Lady Clegg” to give them another reason to remind readers of their twin obsessions with her being Spanish and not using what they refer to as her “married name.” The fact that she just has a name, not a married name, is lost on them as usual.

It’s much better for them, of course, to obsess on these things rather than her expertise on international and EU trade which leads her often to demolish the Government’s handling of Brexit as she did in this article in the Summer.

The best thing this government could do to appease the serious concerns of UK business leaders on Brexit is to rely on the business leaders themselves. This means no more toying with extravagant and ill-founded ideas. And it also means seeking an interim arrangement with the EU to continue benefiting from the single market and the customs union for as long as is needed until an alternative EU-UK deal is reached, as business leaders have proposed. This can be done by placing the UK into the European Economic Area on a temporary basis, and/or looking for an ad hoc arrangement extending the current status quo. Neither the extreme Brexiteers nor the extreme remainers like this option, but it is the only sensible thing to do right now. It allows the UK government to win time. And time is what the government needs – to get the skills it misses, to draft proposals it has not even started to draft yet and to negotiate with the serenity that the high economic interests at stake deserve.

An interim deal is the only way to deal with the ticking clock Michael Barnier hears because, as any trade negotiator knows, there is nothing worse than negotiating against time. Except for negotiating against time in pursuit of delusional and unrealistic ambitions.

But back to Nick. We won’t know if the knighthood story has any basis in fact, or is just something that the Brexiteer tabloids using to fill their pages in the post Christmas lull. 

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NewsHound

Clegg criticises May on Brexit, talks about defeat and the Westminster culture that enables bullying and harassment

By NewsHound | Sun 10th December 2017 - 11:00 am

Nick Clegg gets loads of column inches this weekend.

He has a long interview with Camilla Cavendish in today’s Sunday Times magazine (£). They discuss Brexit, Parliament, sexual harassment and his son’s Blood Cancer.

He describes the serendipitous series of events that meant that he took Antonio to the GP:

To this day, I don’t know what possessed me to take him to the GP. It was those early days in September, you know, when you have to get kids ready for school. Miriam had to work very heavily that week, so I was at home most of the time, helping to do the preparatory things, buying clothes for the new term — and Antonio said he had this thing. We had an afternoon, so I thought, ‘Why don’t I just take him, and he’ll stop going on about it.’ ”

This was quite out of character, he says. “Normally, I’m quite brutal. My Dutch mum regarded going to doctors and hospitals as something one should avoid at all costs.

Thankfully, Antonio is now well on the mend.

Nick spoke about what he’s up to now he’s out of Parliament. He’s taken up drumming and tried (unsuccessfully) to learn to surf.

The interview was conducted just around the time that sexual harassment hit the headlines. Nick slammed the culture at Westminster which created the environment for this abuse:

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Caron Lindsay

LibLink: Nick Clegg: Skeleton Brexit deal risks leaving Parliament in the dark

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 8th December 2017 - 2:55 pm

It’s been a good week for Nick Clegg. he won Best non fiction book by a parliamentarian for his How to Stop Brexit book in the Parliamentary Book Awards. We won’t mention the fact that he sadly wasn’t a parliamentarian when he wrote it. You don’t have to be – former MPs are eligible. He was quite pleased:

Writing in the FT Nick points out the dangers of the current direction of travel in the EU negotiations. With Brexiteers just wanting to get out and not caring about the consequences, they will be happy if there is only a basic outline deal on the table for MPs to vote on this time next year.

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NewsHound

LibLink: Nick Clegg: MPs deserve a vote on the final Brexit plan not a vague sketch

By NewsHound | Fri 17th November 2017 - 1:05 pm

Nick Clegg’s latest iNews column casts a depressing eye over the debate over the EU Withdrawal Bill this week.

First of all, he looks at the ridiculous date of exit issue:

Putting the Brexit date – March 29th 2019 – into legislation is a particularly specious gesture. It may act as catnip to the increasingly agitated Brexiteers, but to our European partners the sight of the British government shutting down the possibility of extending the Brexit talks must look absurd. As they know, and as I do from my time working in the EU, deadlines can be, and are, frequently missed. And the suggestion from the Government that if MPs have the temerity to reject the Brexit deal they will be responsible for the chaos of no deal is as thuggish as it is misleading – if MPs were to reject a bad deal, the EU would pause the Article 50 timetable rather than push us over the edge of the Brexit cliff.

The whole idea of a meaningful vote on a deal is also ridiculous as we won’t have a deal about our future relationship with the EU before we formally leave. As Nick puts it:

So there is now a high likelihood that MPs will be asked to give their consent to Britain’s departure from the EU before knowing the detail of our future relationship with the EU. It will be like buying a house on the basis of a few grainy photos from a dodgy estate agent who won’t allow you to visit the inside. ‘Members of Parliament must hold firm and reject the government’s tactics’ On a recent trip to Brussels, it was made quite clear to me that the two negotiating teams are aiming for no more than a “heads of agreement” deal by the time Britain reaches its Article 50 deadline. This means that David Davis will return with little more than an outline of detail-free pledges on areas like security and combating terrorism, and a vague promise to strike a Canada-style free trade agreement

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The Voice

Laura Gordon selected as PPC for Sheffield Hallam

By The Voice | Sat 4th November 2017 - 10:10 pm

Nick Clegg’s successor as Lib Dem candidate in Sheffield Hallam has been chosen.

Laura Gordon won the selection contest last night.

The Star has more details.

Following her selection by Lib Dem party members on Friday, Ms Gordon said: “I am really honoured to be selected by the Liberal Democrats to be the candidate in Sheffield Hallam. “The Liberal Democrats have a long history in Sheffield Hallam

…

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Caron Lindsay

Miriam says she and Nick knew about Jared O’Mara’s comments but he refused to go negative

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 29th October 2017 - 8:23 pm

Miriam Gonzalez Durantez was on Peston this morning as one of the panel of 3 guests who are there throughout the programme.

The subject of Jared O’Mara’s appallingly racist, misogynist and homophobic comments came up and Miriam said something very interesting instead. She said that Labour must have known about his past because she and Nick did.

That, of course, begs the question that if we knew why on earth didn’t we use it during the campaign. She answered that one as well, saying that Nick refused to run a negative campaign.

She pointed out the hypocrisy of Labour allowing someone with such deeply regressive views to present themselves as a progressive candidate.

It is very typical of Nick to take the high road and not the low one. He is, sometimes to his detriment, an idealist at heart who has always behaved with integrity.

Would it have made a difference if he had used what he knew about O’Mara? Well, let’s look at the change in vote share since 2015. The Labour vote only went up by 2.6%. It was an advance by the Tories of 10.2%, Tories who had hitherto voted tactically for Nick. They unsqueezed themselves presumably to give Theresa May the strong hand she craved in the Brexit negotiations. 

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NewsHound

LibLink: Nick Clegg: Finally the Brexit spell is beginning to lift: MPs are beginning to stand against it

By NewsHound | Sat 21st October 2017 - 10:58 am

In Nick Clegg’s latest iNews column, he says that MPs are finally starting to flex some muscle in the Brexit process. He is as bold as to say that he believes Parliament will actually save the country from its fate. Nick’s article is important because it gives those who think that our fate is inevitable a clear route map to a better future.

He says that if Parliament votes down the deal, the two year Brexit clock will stop ticking:

Next October, Brexit Secretary David Davis will present the Government’s threadbare Brexit deal to the House of Commons for approval. This is the key vote, the key moment, which will determine Britain’s future. Vote down the deal, and headlong rush towards Brexit will come to a shuddering halt. The clock counting down the minutes to Britain’s departure from the EU will stop ticking. ‘Senior officials in Brussels last week expressed their certainty that Britain can still find a place for itself within the EU’

The government, with increasing panic, insists otherwise, and will continue to repeat its threat that by rejecting a deal MPs will be voting for Britain to crash out of Europe without a deal. This is total nonsense. For a start, Britain will legally remain part of the EU.

However, should MPs, on behalf of their constituents, decide not to go ahead with Brexit then the Article 50 process will inevitably be paused. Our friends and partners across Europe won’t shrug their shoulders and simply carry on with the process. Instead the EU will reach for the pause button. This was made clear to me by senior officials in Brussels last week, who not only expressed their growing bewilderment with the government’s approach to the Brexit talks but also their certainty that Britain can find a place for itself within the EU should it choose a different path.

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NewsHound

LibLink: Nick Clegg: Bickering brexiteers and teenage footballers

By NewsHound | Fri 20th October 2017 - 10:25 am

Nick Clegg has been telling the readers of the New Statesman all about his week.

As he attended a reception on mental health at Buckingham Palace, he remembered one of his first appearances as Lib Dem Leader at PMQs:

In the evening, I attended a reception at Buckingham Palace to support people who work in mental health, listening to a good speech by Prince William and a funny and moving one by Stephen Fry. Almost exactly ten years ago I raised mental health at Prime Minister’s Questions when Gordon Brown was at the despatch box as PM, and I was a newly elected Lib Dem leader. At the time, it was considered a “brave” thing to do – party leaders never raised mental health in the Commons. So it’s massive progress that mental health is now talked about openly in parliament, in the media, and even in Buckingham Palace. But the gap between words and deeds is huge. The taboo may have been broken, but the problems of poor mental-health provision still exist.

On a trip to Brussels, he learned something quite alarming about Brexit:

I caught up with some senior European Commission officials in Brussels, some of whom I’ve known for more than 20 years, from the time I worked there. One told me that the most striking moment in the Brexit negotiations so far was when UK officials asked whether the EU could provide Britain with “technical assistance” on how to process and transport nuclear materials, tasks presently overseen by Euratom (the European Atomic Energy Community). “Technical assistance is what the EU provides to some of the poorest countries of the world,” my friend told me. “Now the UK is asking for help like a developing nation. Wow.”

Then he went to see Hillary Clinton at the South Bank Centre and had some observations on defeat:

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NewsHound

LibLink: Nick Clegg: Be warned, Brexiteers, I know better than most the consequences of breaking a promise

By NewsHound | Fri 13th October 2017 - 10:22 am

Writing for the Times Red Box, Nick Clegg has been warning Brexiteers about the dangers of not keeping promises you make to electorate. As he points out, he should know.

The Brexiteers are heading for the same stormy waters, he says:

When asked to reflect on the official Leave campaign’s shopping list of promises to the voters during the referendum campaign, Duncan Smith, one of the most vocal campaigners for Brexit, dismissively replied: “We just made a series of promises that were possibilities.”

We know that leading lights of the Leave campaign had had enough of experts; now they appear to have had enough of dictionaries.

It’s easy to see why. None of their impossible promises have been met and, as I suspect Mr Duncan Smith knows full well, never will be.

And, of course, when they can’t keep their promises, they blame others:

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Tom Morrison

A referendum on the Brexit deal is key, not growing other parties.

By Tom Morrison | Mon 9th October 2017 - 10:15 am

You know, I never understood why you gun control people don’t all join the NRA. They’ve got two million members. You bring three million to the next meeting, call a vote. All those in favour of tossing guns… bam! Move on.

It is one of the most memorable lines in every political anorak’s favourite TV show, The West Wing. Although steeped in high fantasy, the strategy from Congressman Skinner does present some food for thought – if you want to defeat your enemy, why not do it from within? It’ll be less bloody, it may even mean a quicker and more efficient way to smash your political nemesis into irrelevance.

These sentiments, in some part, were echoed by my friend and former leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg in the Observer. In his comment piece he states that anti-Brexit Labour-inclined voters, and their Conservative counterparts, should join their respective parties to change the direction of each organisation and, in turn, the future of the country.

These voters, argues Nick, should then lobby their MPs, leaders and change the debate at conferences to make sure that Britain’s spiral into a Brexit self-harm is stopped.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 15 Comments
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