Having spent all Thursday night at the count, I’ve been catching up on the results programmes to see how the extraordinary night unfolded.
I’m still pretty devastated that we’ve lost the country’s foremost authority on matters European from Parliament when we most need him.
Here is his typically gracious concession speech, in which he talks about the importance of people from all parties reaching out to each other to heal the division in the country. I suspect he would have said exactly the same thing if he had won.
I’m still at the stage where I feel sick every time I think of the House of Commons without Nick in it. I have no doubt, though, that he will, if he wants, find a public role where he can continue to be an authoritative, reasoned, internationalist voice.
There are few people in life who are irreplaceable, but as Brexit spokesperson, Nick is one of them.
* 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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30 Comments
On the contrary, this election has done him and us a favour in freeing him from parliament. Despite his intelligence and skills, he could never have escaped from the tuition fees catastrophe – just as May will never recover from Thursday – and having him hanging around parliament as a shadow of his former self, dragging his legacy around like an old man chained to a heavy rock, wasn’t helping him or us. He won’t have any difficulty finding something more rewarding (and hopefully socially worthwhile) to do with his time.
Yes Caron, I do agree with you here.
The party can ill afford to lose Nick’s expertise now (as I’ve openly said elsewhere)
I would hope a consultancy type role (and guest speaker slots) will be found for him and he will continue to inform debate and advise on strategy as a more softer Brexit (hopefully) now begins to be pursued.
I thought this was a great speech. I’m concerned about Britain and Nick is right that political opponents need to reach out to each other. However I am concerned by what I am seeing. I’ve never known such hatred against the Conservatives and that must mean a dislike of centrists and many liberals too. We need to make the moral case for liberalism and tolerance stronger than before otherwise Britain is going to become a very divided and unhappy place.
Clegg should have done what the DUP are doing, confidence and supply. That would have given him real influence. Instead he became the Tories whipping boy and has destroyed his party. So sad, imagine what could have been.
Ian I couldn’t agree more, it’s a step forward for social liberalism. The reason Nick Clegg lost his seat was reneging on tuition fees and the adherence to public sector cuts and the freeze on public sector pay amongst other things. A classic liberal is not a social liberal and not the party I will be joining.
Paul,
Is that why Greg Mulholland lost his very similar seat? Students had absolutely no reason to take any revenge on him, but they were offered far more by Labour in this election than by us…
Don’t read too much into the significance of individual results. We did very badly in every seat where we were facing Labour and that is mainly because they were up 10% on last time and we were not….
@ Andrew and that is partly because we ceded the chance to be the party that champions an end to inter-generational unfairness thanks to Clegg’s catastrophic mistake, and partly because we appointed numpties to run our 2017 campaign who were clueless as to the public mood and whose only achievement was to salvage a tiny bit of Mr Coetzee’s reputation by undercutting even his blinkered misjudgement.
bartelbe
“Clegg should have done what the DUP are doing, confidence and supply. That would have given him real influence. Instead he became the Tories whipping boy and has destroyed his party. So sad, imagine what could have been.”
I have Googled “DUP special conference of members” and nothing came up. Are they going to have a special conference of members to endorse, change or cancel the decision like we did?
It was a party decision bartelbe – Nick didn’t and couldn’t have acted on his own.
If Clegg being Portilloed had happened in 2015 the party would be two years further along it’s recovery curve. It didn’t and he’s hung around desperately trying to ensure he’s not remembered for Tuition Fees which he always will be. Since Brexit he’s actively undermined Farron by sucking up vast quantities of the party’s scarce air time and reminder by voters of the past. An early General Election gave him the chance to retire but he didn’t take. So forgive me if I shed no tears now he’s finally met the same fate as thoasands of other liberal elected representatives who’s careers were ended by his vanity.
Nick Clegg at his best – a marvelous speech. I was not his greatest fan when he was leader. I have long since forgiven him and think he was (and is!) superb on Brexit. I was very sad indeed to see him lose!
Nick Clegg was a courageous leader but he had a tin ear for political discourse.
1) He was absolutely right to go into the Coalition, but the congratulatory “Rose Garden Moment” was appalling and set totally the wrong tone. He should have made it clear the Lib Dems were going into government against their will and under strict conditions, not as some kind of (unrequited) love-in with the Tories;
2) He should have kicked tuition fees into the long grass somehow by delaying any changes further, rather than going for outright betrayal of a clear promise;
3) Changes to the NHS and the Bedroom Tax should also have been stalled;
4) His EU debate debacle showed how uncritical and weak he was on Europe. This weakness was carried on into this year’s General Election campaign, where the party lost share of vote. Can we just settle this once and for all: there are no votes, in England at least, in being an openly pro-EU party.
In short, had Clegg been more calculating and tougher, he could have avoided the massive mistakes that cost the Lib Dems so much. So many own goals, it’s a real shame.
Clegg should have been locked up in a cupboard before the election and should certainly not now be allowed to use up valuable media coverage which should be used to promote Tim Farron. I understand tbe party had no choice but to allow Clegg a part in the election but that was only because his ego would not allow him to do what he should have done….retire.
Of course his speech was “typically gracious”, and he is indeed a charming personable man.
Sadly the decisions on austerity, welfare etc., made him Mr Cameron’s poodle and whether the Coalition was his own decision or not, it torpedoed the party. The Captain of the Titanic went down with his ship after it hit the iceberg…….. in this case it’s taken two years longer………… after Mr Corbyn suddenly found his voice and said the things we should have been saying and doing over the last seven years.
The anti-Clegg sentiment is primarily on this website because I haven’t come across it amongst the general public. In fact one young voter thought he was ‘a class act’.
I thought his appearances on TV trying to get a debate on Brexit going were positively received whereas Tim Farron’s struggle to reconcile his religious convictions wasn’t.
Some of us saw this coming and asked him to clarify his position on, for instance, gay sex during his leadership campaign and he wouldn’t.
“Mr Coetzee’s reputation” According to Tim Shipman, political editor of the Sunday Times, in his book “All Out War” Mr Coetzee’s focus groups identified the problem with the 2016 referendum campaign that voters simply did not understand what David Cameron and George Osborne were talking about. What Cameron and Osborne said about the single market meant vote remain, but has been spun by others to imply something that was not on the ballot paper. Coetzee was correct, but ignored by the hierarchy within the Stronger In campaign, so that his message did not even reach David Cameron and George Osborne.
It is no small irony that young people turned out in record numbers in Nick’s seat to vote him out on the basis that Labour were promising to end tuition fees. Something Nick and our party stood for when Nick was first elected.
The damage to the party during the Clegg era is something that we will take decades to recover from, if we ever do. Those who persist in looking at his record through rose-tinted spectacles should consider a few sobering facts.
The party won 62 seats in the 2005 General Election under Charles Kennedy. This reduced to 57 in 2010, but we did not lose any deposits in the 2010 general election.
Our party was growing in many parts of the country, with the possibility of continuing that steady growth towards the long term target of 100 MPs and to then be in a position of making sustainable long term changes to both the electoral system and many policy areas of Government.
In 2015 we lost 49 seats.
In this election, while we gained a few seats, our party lost its deposit in 375 seats.
Sadly many good councillors, MSPs and others also lost their seats during his time as leader, through no fault of their own, but as a direct result of Nick’s actions along with other leading Lib-Dems who left our party badly damaged during their time at the top.
Sad to lose Hallam, especially to Labour. However let us hope Cleggie will be offerred a job in the City and he gets out of our hair for a few years. Whilst he keeps popping up the young people and their parents are reminded of Tuition Fees, he made a complete faux pas with that and it will continue to hurt us for many years. That is the reality. Gracious leaving speeches mean nothing compared to that legacy. We must now move on and forget him. It is hard but reality.
<i."On the contrary, this election has done him and us a favour in freeing him from parliament." Ian
I agree, however, with respect to tuition fees, the issue isn’t so much Nick Clegg not being able to recover but that some elements of the LibDem being stuck in a timewarp and so are unable to let go and move on.
By no longer being an MP, Nick is now free to become a member of the Lords and/or (if May et al have any sense) be appointed to the EU, where his experience and contacts could benefit the UK in the coming decade as we first negotiate Brexit and then build our new relationship.
Andrew, what was the percentage who didn’t actually vote? I am sure when all the analysis is said and done, many Lib Dems voters stayed at home this time or just didn’t vote whereas Labour voters did just that, get out and vote in ever greater numbers.
Clegg’s departure is probably for the best in that it lances a party boil and a fresh start can be made.
But don’t expect a magical return to 60 seats any time soon. Those who heap on his head the entire blame for the 2015 losses are being unfair. Ineptitude, certainly, and a different course would have been better but we saw, and are seeing ever more stridently now, a polarisation amounting to a craving for extremism in the population who feel let down and ignored by moderate politicians.
The party as a whole, must share at least some of the blame for the losses in that there are an awful lot of voices angrily raised against each other with little sign of a productive and respectful rapprochement which could produce genuinely attractive and memorable offerings for the the electorate.
Clegg shouldnt give up on his Seat just yet, things can change very quickly & in unpredictable directions, as we have seen. If Clegg is going to give up on The Commons then we should try to get him into The Lords.
I dont get the naked hostility on LDV for Clegg & Farron, some Libdems just seem to swallow every Labour smear against us.
@paul barker “I dont get the naked hostility on LDV for Clegg & Farron”
The disappointment in Nick Clegg and the resulting hostility in some quarters is wholly understandable. More controversially perhaps, it might also be justified insofar as there appear to be many longstanding Lib Dems who are very unhappy with the direction in which he led the party and the way in which he did it.
But like you, I don’t understand the way that some Lib Dems seem to have turned on Tim Farron so quickly. He was certainly less smooth than Clegg in interviews (but then, apart from Blair and Cameron, who isn’t?) and I am sure that his relatively down-to-earth personality could be exploited (horrible word, I admit) better than it has been. But I don’t yet see how he can be blamed for the failure of the Lib Dem campaign that he fronted. If he was the mastermind of the poor strategy then he certainly deserves blame. But it is not clear if that is the case and scapegoating Farron risks letting others off the hook and failing to address underlying problems with the vision and strategy of the party.
Peter that’s it in a nutshell. I felt really badly let down under Nick Clegg’s leadership and his espousing of extreme Orange Booker politics. As a low income council tenant it was the worst period of my life ever as a party member. In fact when he and Chris Huhne stood for the leadership election, I soiled my ballot and wrote Charles Kennedy who had at that time been forced out. Some of the personal attacks on Tim seem to be geographical. I heard a caller on radio say he wouldn’t vote UKIP this time only because he doesn’t trust a scouser and there is still this awful regional stereotyping of politicians. I mean how many northern MPs serve in the cabinet of key government positions, not many.
Nick being replaced by an apparent misogynist is a bitter pill to swallow
Thomas Shakespeare 14th Jun ’17 – 5:45am………….
Just after Paul Barker’s complaint about ‘Labour Smears’ you write this….”.Nick being replaced by an apparent misogynist is a bitter pill to swallow”……………..
The only info I can find on Jared O’Mara is that he “was born with cerebral palsy. Before entering politics, he was a local school governor and had worked with Sheffield-based disability information services and charities.”
Perhaps you could support your claim?
@expats “Perhaps you could support your claim?”
It appears to be based on this: https://order-order.com/people/jared-omara/
I’ll leave others to judge whether or not the smear is ridiculous.
Peter Watson 14th Jun ’17 – 12:11pm…If Guido Fawkes runs the story it must be true…I searched his site for LibDem stories and note that, if they are true, most of us should be ‘shot at dawn’….
@expats “If Guido Fawkes runs the story it must be true”
Just to clarify, when I originally linked to the page about Jared O’Mara the only article was the one about his song “I Wish I were A Misogynist” (https://order-order.com/2017/06/07/labour-candidate-i-wish-i-were-a-misogynist-id-smash-her-in-the-face/)
Since then a second one has been added (https://order-order.com/2017/06/14/constituent-claims-new-labour-mp-called-her-ugly-btch/). Perhaps by the time I post this there’ll be a third.
Peter Watson…It appears that 11 years ago Jared O’Mara was a member of a group called “Dirty Rotten Troubadours”… Any group with a name like DRT are hardly likely to be singing “The Wheels on the Bus…”
Nick Clegg went up in my estimation when, having been rejected by the electorate, he chose not to accept patronage and enter the undemocratic House of Lords.
@ Thomas Shakespeare,
It seems that you have already swallowed a bitter pill, along with many of your party.
A Guido Fawkes fan are you?