Politics

Clegg’s tightrope

September 21, 2011
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There was a telling moment in the press section of the audience for Nick Clegg’s question and answer session with delegates at the Lib Dem conference in Birmingham on Monday afternoon. Clegg had just dropped into the discussion a new pledge of £355m for educating girls in the poorer parts of Asia and Africa, and a reporter from a Conservative-supporting newspaper rang his newsdesk to pitch the story. There was a pause, indicating a lack of interest on the other end of the call. Then the journalist crunched it down: “Clegg uses our money to buy off his base—yeah?” Along those lines, the story got in the following day’s paper. According to a source close to Clegg, he is resigned to this sort of thing: one of his aides recently asked a senior editorial figure on the same paper whether there is anything he could do that would be welcomed by the outlet. “No,” came the unhesitant reply.

This small episode serves to illustrate the near-impossible tightrope Clegg has walked, with a level of success that exceeded most expectations, at this conference. For his party has gathered after one of the worst years in its modern history, against a backdrop of losing a once-in-a-generation chance for electoral reform, hundreds of defeats in local elections, an average poll rating of around 11 per cent and, according to figures released today by Ipsos-Mori, a trust rating of just 13 per cent.

Clegg has repeatedly admitted that perception of his party matters as much as the reality of what it is doing in government. The Lib Dems were at their most electorally successful since Lloyd George when Charles Kennedy carved out a distinct identity and filled a gap in the social democratic market by opposing the invasion of Iraq and calling for a penny on income tax. The perception today—among most former Lib Dem voters at least—is of a party that has betrayed its progressive roots. The joke still doing the rounds on the fringes is that, on ringing up the Lib Dem press office to ask for their latest policy documents, you are told: “Sorry, we’ve sold out.” Meanwhile Clegg’s critics on the left believe his party’s influence on policy is deeply overrated.



“Down in Westminster we’ve been vilified like never before,” Clegg said in his keynote speech today that was more of an argument for the coalition than a list of policy achievements. “The left and the right didn’t like us much in opposition. They like us a whole lot less in government. The left accuse us of being powerless puppets, duped by a right-wing Conservative clique. The right accuse us of being a sinister left-wing clique, who’ve duped powerless Conservatives. I do wish they’d make up their mind.”

This oft-repeated line is an attempt at inducing sympathy. It has echoes of Tony Blair’s “masochism strategy” and self-deprecation in the face of attacks. There is almost a Millwall-like quality to it: “Everyone hates us, we don’t care.”

But Clegg, who is privately in much better spirits than recent speculation suggests, deserves credit for emerging from this conference stronger than before and with his party almost exclusively united around him. He was Blair-like, indeed, when it came to lecturing and occasionally showing just a touch of disdain for his rank and file during the Q&A, reminding delegates that the success of the coalition is their responsibility as well as his. And he is in command. The Ipsos-Mori poll shows that the Lib Dems are seen as the most divided of the three parties, an unusual position for them to be in compared to the Tories and Labour. Yet it has been notably hard to find critics among the party’s unexpectedly passive grassroots in Birmingham.

At a national level, even rebellious MPs are falling into line in Clegg’s hour of need. Only the elusive Charles Kennedy is said to remain opposed outright to the alliance with the Tories. Tim Farron, the party's president and up-and-coming darling of the party’s left (see September's "One to watch"), has been careful not to say anything that looks like a bid to unseat Clegg, and has even retracted his statement earlier in the week that the coalition would inevitably end in “divorce.” Many in the party, in Labour, and indeed in the country, might have preferred an alliance with Labour last May. But even Farron has said on the record that, in a similar situation, the Lib Dems would probably end up with the Tories again after the next election.

That may depend on the political future of Nick Clegg, and whether he is, as he says he will be, leader in May 2015 and beyond. “Some of you may have even wondered: will it all be worth it in the end?” Clegg said. “It will be.”

There were faint touches of hypocrisy in parts of his speech. He explained the decision to govern with the Tories by echoing Neil Kinnock’s electrifying expulsion of Militant, the faction of the Labour party grouped around the magazine of that name, in 1985: “You don’t play politics at a time of national crisis. You don’t play politics with the economy. And you never, ever play politics with people’s jobs.” But the self-interest of ministerial jobs must have played a role in that decision, as well as the national interest.

Clegg made a powerful attack against Ed Miliband and Ed Balls: “The two Eds, behind the scenes, lurking in the shadows, always plotting, always scheming, never taking responsibility. At this time of crisis what Britain needs is real leadership. This is no time for the back room boys.” But like Cameron, Clegg is cut from the same "special adviser" cloth as the Labour leader and shadow chancellor.

Clegg appeared to dismiss the reality of his fees U-turn, and came perilously close to blaming the electorate for not understanding the policy. “Probably the most important lesson I have learned is this: no matter how hard you work on the details of a policy, it’s no good if the perception is wrong. We can say until we’re blue in the face that no one will have to pay any fees as a student, but still people don’t believe it. That once you’ve left university you’ll pay less, week in week out, than under the current system, but still people don’t believe it. That the support given to students from poorer families will increase dramatically, but still people don’t believe it… The simple truth is that the Conservatives and Labour were both set on increasing fees, and in those circumstances we did the best thing we could.” Yet he was questioned by students in the general election campaign who feared the economic circumstances would force him to change his mind on fees—and he went out of his way to assure them he would not.

Clegg ended his speech with a call for a fresh start. “Britain is our home. We will make it safe and strong. These are our children. We will tear down every barrier they face. And this is our future. We start building it today.” The difficulty for the Lib Dem leader is that the electorate knows he started building the “future” with the Conservatives a year ago, not today. The extent to which he really can make his party “punch above its weight” depends on whether, in the eyes of the electorate, the events of the past year that Clegg prefers to forget, can be eclipsed by the next three he is looking forward to.

Read the full text of Nick Clegg's speech to the Liberal Democrat conference here.


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