Cleggmania used to be like Henmania – everyone loves a plucky underdog with a fresh face and floppy hair. He even carried through the comparison by proving to be a bit of a let down at the crucial moment. But these days, Clegg’s mania seems more like the type that a psychiatrist would treat.
In some ways, I feel sorry for the guy. After all, once the Lib Dems had suffered a disappointing (and deeply unfair) setback at the election, he didn’t really have much room for manoeuvre. The decision to enter the coalition was never going to be popular, but the alternatives were unthinkable.
Since then, he has made some pretty spectacular blunders. Even if you are prepared to put aside the tuition fee debacle (some pundits would insist his only mistake was making the pledge in the first place!), his list of blunders since May is incredible. It got so bad this week that Ed Miliband started quoting the Lib Dems’ own statements against the rise in VAT – talk about writing your own death warrant!
But one thing really caps it all – Nick Clegg is unbelievably, inexcusably patronising. He seems to preach interminably about building a fair society, about creating an open political process – and then does the exact opposite. And most infuriatingly of all, everything he does is “liberal”. It’s as if he has an exclusive right to the word liberal, just because it’s in the name of his party.
That might sound pretty trivial if you’re a prospective student, or a public sector worker facing unemployment, but there’s a point in here. The Lib Dems have had to make difficult choices on big issues, and as a junior coalition partner they have to pick their battles – as Vince Cable knows all too well. The battles they’ve picked have too often been driven by their obsession with a narrow strand of liberalism – an issue that doesn’t tend to interest very many people. Electoral reform, civil liberties for terror suspects, freedom of information and the like are worthy issues, but they are not ones that matter much to the electorate. (Indeed, electoral reform was my number one issue at the election, but that says a lot more about me as a person than about the voting system as a political issue).
Meanwhile, on the issues that matter most to ordinary people – the deficit, healthcare, education and so on – Nick Clegg and his party have surrendered meekly. Many people, myself included, hoped the Lib Dems could moderate Conservative radicalism in these areas, but they haven’t. They’ve sacrificed this role to push through a few pet Liberal policies. As a result, we’ve seen VAT rise, eye-watering cuts to some public services, and a retrenchment of state support for higher education, and we await the impact of sudden, drastic reforms of how schools and healthcare are run, with the Lib Dems forced to defend each and everyone. It’s no wonder Mr. Clegg is so unpopular.
Comment by Alan Knight:
ReplyDeleteYou won’t remember those years after the last world war when we were advised
not to drink the water whilst travelling through Europe? The trouble with
countries such as France and Italy, we were told, was their political
instability. Their governments changed every few months. This was why they
were so backward.
The whole of Europe suffered from a very un-British voting system based on
something called proportional representation. It meant that they had to
suffer coalition governments. They had to indulge in what we British have
always dreaded, consensus politics. They lacked the firm government that we
used to enjoy with our almost unique first past the post system The beauty
of our system is that the Government does not need the support of a majority
of the electorate. In this country you can even form a government with less
votes than the main opposition party.
In fact, when one considers the enormous benefits of our electoral system,
the great mystery is how those backward nations in Europe have all managed
to do so well despite their electoral handicaps.
When the Russian ambassador to this country was interviewed many years ago
after Russian elections, he said he was not prepared to take lessons on
democracy from an American president (Bush) who had received half a million
fewer votes than his opponent. He could have gone on to point out that our
own UK government achieved an enormous majority despite receiving
substantially less votes than the opposition.
You would have thought that democracy was an easy thing to define but I do
not find it so. The Greek meaning of a democratic government was a system
'run by the people for the people and tolerating minority views’ which did
not need leaders. It is said that the Romans used leaders to distance
themselves from democracy.
Whatever the definition I do know is that it is hard to claim that we in
this country live in a democracy if it is possible to obtain a massive
majority of seats with a minority of the votes.
Let’s look at some of the strange results of our system of “representative
democracy”. For example in 1951 the Labour Party gained 260,684 more votes
than the Tories. At the time their vote was the highest ever recorded, and
has only since been exceeded once, but the Tories won 26 more seats and
remained in power for 13 years. In the February 1974 election Conservatives
were denied government because Labour won four more seats even though the
Conservatives had 230,000 more votes than Labour. In the May 1987 local
elections in Liverpool the Liberals had 51% of the vote but Labour got back
in office with 40%.
In 1997 in Wales, Plaid Cymru won 4 seats with only 9% of the vote, the Lib
Dems won 2 with 12% and the Tories with 20% gained no MPs at all! In the
May 1996 local elections the Conservatives won 27% of the vote but only 17%
of the seats. The Liberal Democrats won 118 more seats with fewer votes
(26%).
In Bath in the May 1991 council elections the party that came first in the
polls gained 6 seats, the party that came second gained 10 seats. In
Richmond upon Thames the Liberal Democrats achieved 92% of the seats with
only 46% of the votes
I suspect that when we have the poll in May the vote will go against AV. I
am not a great fan of AV but it could be a first step in turning this
country into a democracy. I think we should stop prattling on about
electoral reform and campaign for this country to become a democracy.