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Essays Magazine david goodhart Lib Dem liberal democrat liberal democrats MPs Nick Clegg Tories tuition fees

Nick Clegg: my original sin

The deputy prime minister tells David Goodhart how he shrugs off the cries of “Judas” and accepts that “you often cannot defeat emotion with reason”

By David Goodhart  
December 15, 2010
January 2011

“The coalition agreement itself was my original sin. Tuition fees and so on are an add-on”

Click here to read David Goodhart’s feature on Sheffield and the Liberal Democrats

Nick Clegg is confident and candid enough to know that his reputation has taken a battering in Sheffield, where he is one of the city’s six MPs. Even some of his own party members in the city, he says, are “bewildered” by his support for the coalition’s policy on tuition fees. Having pledged to fight the policy, only 21 out of 57 Lib Dem MPs voted against the government when it…

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David Goodhart

David Goodhart is Director of the Integration Hub at the Policy Exchange think tank and founding editor of Prospect Magazine

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