Going to Work on a Clegg.
The knives are out for Nick Clegg, or perhaps it is the knaves.
He is a ‘traitor’, a ‘Judas’, a ‘man with no morals or integrity’. Many of these biblical appellations come from his own party members. The anger is palpable. A total of 51 Liberal-Democrat councillors have now resigned having decided that that a Liberal-Democrat presence on their local council is nowhere near as important as publicly registering their disgust – at what precisely?
It is a quite illogical stance. Every one of those councillors was elected on a Liberal-Democrat manifesto and once elected, discovered that they had to compromise, to work with Labour and Conservative councillors; to face the reality of their local council coffers, rather than abide by their electioneering wish list.
Had they won 100% majority on the council and were then theoretically in a position to keep every one of their ‘promises’ – they would still have been constrained by the state of the council bank balance.
Labour politicians don’t keep their election promises. Neither do Conservatives. Manifestos are not enforceable – nor should they be; they are written without the benefit of the knowledge that comes from gaining office, the dazzling light of reality.
Clegg is guilty of having reached a compromise from a position of weakness – he had no overall majority of votes. Neither did Labour. He kissed Cameron in the rose garden of Downing Street – and the true believers are never going to forgive him.
Should he have refused his seat in the Cabinet Office, any hope of softening the edges of the Tory government? Should he have remained forever the little boy shouting ‘Shan’t, won’t, you’re not my Dad’ from the back of the classroom?
Perhaps he should have formed a coalition with Labour? Would he have been able to keep his election manifesto then? Would Labour’s whip machinery have stood back and said ‘Little Nick promised not to raise university fees’ so we won’t.
Do the Liberal-Democrats who scream for his head on a platter really believe that? They are both fools and knaves if they do.
Much has been said on the subject of the Liberal-Democrats representing a new politics of honesty and principle, a fresh broom that would sweep clean through the Augean stables of Westminster – and possibly they would have been – had they won the election. They didn’t.
Liberal-Democrats have built an entire philosophy around the alleged ‘exclusion from power’, the unfair voting system that doesn’t accord them any chance of sitting in Cabinet – now they have one. The coalition is a Curate’s egg – both good and bad in parts; a compromise between the minority Lib-Dem ideology, the majority Conservative ideology, heavily tempered by the reality of the UKs precarious debt position. Quite why so many Lib-Dem councillors are under the impression that there was an alternative beats me. Should have got more votes in, shouldn’t they?
Enjoy Good Friday!
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April 22, 2011 at 09:29 -
They formed from two bits that were glued
A hybrid that gets comments rude
With yellow and pink
Manifestos that stink
And their letterbox often gets poo’d -
April 22, 2011 at 09:30 -
Now come on give the Lib-Dem councillors their due, they’re normally pretty good at getting the streets cleaned and……I’ll get back to you on the rest if I can think of anything!
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April 22, 2011 at 09:31 -
Well said. Lib dems are a minor party.
They’ve bleated for years about proportional representation, so that they can have a minor place in government.
Now they’ve got one, and do they like it?
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April 22, 2011 at 10:08 -
There is a certain kind of political animal. Liberal Democrats being an example on the left and the Libertarians on the right, who really don’t fancy doing hand to hand combat with reality, but prefer to keep their hands clean and airily debate what ‘should be’.
It can be fun to have these debates, but at the end of the day there are only two choices, Tory right or Labour Left. This is why I (albeit with a heavy heart) am in the Tory camp but always making the libertarian argument, and make sure I am seen by my fellow party members to be a libertarian with a coherent set of convictions, rather than a member of the libertarian party sat in a Southwark pub debating what ‘should be’.
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April 22, 2011 at 11:13 -
Well said. We may all despise Realpolitik but this side of heaven it’s the best we’ve got.
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April 22, 2011 at 17:47 -
That comment needs a bit of correction:
“there are only two choices, Tory LEFT or labour LOONY LEFT.”
a lim-dick vote is LEFT AFTER A GOOD DEAL OF DISCUSSION AND COMMITTEE DECISIONS.
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April 22, 2011 at 10:31 -
Reality bites, as most of us have found out in life. I don’t suppose politics is much different. Any fool can make promises and have ambitions (especially when young and naive), but it takes slog, guts, determination and compromise to actually get things done, and then it won’t be perfect – the best most of us will ever manage is ‘better than it was’ – if we’re lucky.
I have a small grain of sympathy for the politicians – nobody ever got elected on a promise to spend less (even if that’s what’s blindingly obviously needed), so they have to extract votes from an electorate that is sometimes not as economically savvy as many of us would wish.
It happens in other ways too; anybody remember the ‘ethical foreign policy’ propounded by another Party, which became ‘foreign policy with an ethical dimension’ and then slowly withered as the harsh realities of world diplomacy and real affairs reared their ugly heads.
I think history will be much kinder to Nick Clegg than many people are being at the moment. When the public delivered their verdict in the election (“actually, we’re not that keen on any of you”), he rose to challenge and has, in general, acted in the best interests of the country. (Before you ask, no – I didn’t vote LibDem.) Maybe there’s a moral in this – doing the Right Thing may be unpopular at the time, but it is still the Right Thing. Compare and contrast with the previous government….
Funny old game, life.
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April 22, 2011 at 17:56 -
Errr, what factor of safety was applied to that calculation?
I don’t think history will be kind to any modern-day politician, their inept handling of situations is rarely forced by circumstances beyond their control, rather their dogmatic refusal to read the data in front of them
results in inferior decision-making.-
April 22, 2011 at 20:53 -
Let’s wait and see, shall we?
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April 22, 2011 at 22:27 -
By the time the history is written on Clegg, a career politician who will be screwing over the country for at least another twenty years, I’ll likely be dead.
So I don’t have the luxury of “lets see” and frankly nor does the country.
He is just another parasite on the body politic, forced by circumstances to actually make decisions, something he never expected to have to do. That this has resulted in numerous resignations is a positive outcome, the electorate is now somewhat aware that a limp-dick vote is a wasted vote.
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April 22, 2011 at 17:41 -
Great graphics!
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April 22, 2011 at 21:06 -
It’s all a deception.
But a yes vote for AV might just throw things open for some interesting alternatives? -
April 23, 2011 at 15:21 -
Augean stables, not Aegean stables, Anna! Except if they’re for seahorses, of course…
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April 23, 2011 at 16:00
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