Clegg’s Choice
By Emma.
Usually, it has to be said, I find Nick Clegg unmemorable. I have been known to describe him as mind butter, given that my brain can’t seem to stay focussed on what he’s saying, his words just slide right off. All of which, of course makes him an ideal leader of the Liberal Democrats. Given their strongest electoral asset tends to be their inability to be pinned down on specifics, be all things to all voters etc., his very unmemorableness serves them well.
The third party will tend to pick up voters from those who are interested in politics, but are disaffected with the two main parties. It is my strong instinct that this will tend to lead to more people leaving the party of power to the third party at any given time. So for the last 13 years, in my experience, it’s been the disaffected left who have left or not joined Labour over issues like the war, tuition fees (which I don’t think is a left wing issue, but that’s another post), ID cards etc.
Nick Clegg on the other hand seems to come from the right of the party – certainly economically. He was an Orange Booker and has frequently cited market liberalism as a cure for economic ills. He’s not a stupid man or a naive one, so he also knew exactly what he was doing when he eulogised Thatcher recently, pledged to cut the deficit with cuts only, ruling out tax increases (something even the Tories haven’t done) and harking back to the miners strike of the 1980s. Despite the key message being about reigning in bankers, he knows these are dog whistle messages to the Tories that they can work together as long as the Tories do so to Vince Cable’s time table. Swingeing cuts but not just yet seems to me to be the message Clegg is giving.
The irony that the Liberal Democrat’s weakest leader since David Steele is in a likely position to have the most power a Liberal has enjoyed since Lloyd George is lost on no one. But personally I can’t imagine a more poisoned chalice. The Lib Dems have for so long been the place for people who are discontented to pour their hopes, usually without it having to mean anything in reality (though of course they have disappointed locally, from the mess of Southwark leisure, to the 70% of wind farm rejections by Lib Dem councils). They have always been able to comfortably criticise from the sidelines without the pressure that the responsibility of governance brings. So if Clegg is forced to pick a side, and does so over issues that the Lib Dems really care about but make little impact on the lives of ordinary people (I’m talking PR of course – again another post for another day) they will find themselves suddenly under scrutiny, supporting a party (either way) that a great deal of their supporters can’t stand and no longer a great repository for disillusioned voters.
The Greens must be praying very hard for a hung Parliament.
Tags: cuts, Lib Dems, Nick Clegg, tories
Tuesday, March 16th 2010 at 13:56
I’m interested to know why you think Clegg is a weak leader.
Tuesday, March 16th 2010 at 15:09
It’s a combination of things really.
He’s not a great orator, which would be fine if he had some obvious intellectual fire-power to make up for it, but I can’t see it. He’s too quick to give up real party shiboliths, and I can’t see that he gets what he wants to gain from doing so.
My main problem with the Liberal Democrats I have encountered politically (not you of course!) has been one of intergrity. You will know that there is a strong perception that the Lib Dems do try to be all things to all people, and this isn’t a baseless accusation. The Lib Dem record on wind farm applications is a good example of this say one thing nationally and do the other locally syndrome.
For me Clegg seems to personify, somewhat too comfortably, this all things to all people attitude. He’s just too bland (unlike Charles Kennedy) and not passionate enough (like Paddy Ashdown). Everyone respects Vince Cable more than Clegg, but Clegg was blander and more like Blair and Cameron, so he’s the one leading you.
In many ways he reminds me of some of the newest of New Labour Politicians (James Purnell or even Alan Milburn spring to mind) and that’s not a complement!
Tuesday, March 16th 2010 at 16:47
“The irony that the Liberal Democrat’s weakest leader since David Steele”
Not to be pedantic, but surely Ming Campbell? Kennedy was a good leader in terms of personal patter etc., but Clegg has professionalised a number of aspects of the party (something Ashdown also failed to do, i think), and in my opinion put its policies on a more credible footing. Sure, we get the occasional proposal like the Mansion Tax which hasn’t been properly thought through when first announced, but it’s important to note that that kind of thing used to be standard, whereas now it’s a mildly embarrassing exception.
Even so, i don’t particularly see why the detail of every policy has to be spelt out to the greatest possible degree – sorting out the detail is what the civil service is for, and compared to the other two main parties, the level of detail in Lib Dem policy proposals is generally pretty good.
Aside from the criticisms of Clegg’s personal style, some of which i agree with (comes over rather bland, not a great orator, seems to be all things to all people at times, etc.), the general tenor of this piece is a bit of a retread of standard main-party dismissals of the Lib Dems – that the party is just a repository for anti-politics votes, etc. etc. I think that mindset is both fairly insulting (in so far as it presumes you can’t be – as i and many of my friends are – ideologically attracted to the Lib Dems) and fairly arrogant (in so far as it seems unable to contemplate or comprehend the idea that you might come to left-wing politics from a liberal, rather than Fabian/socialist/social democratic, perspective). I’m personally quite happy for people in the Labour and Tory parties to write off the Lib Dems, however; i don’t see how it harms us particularly, other than perhaps in lost defections, but i imagine we’ll manage without those.
The criticisms that relate to integrity have the potential to be more pertinent. The wind farm take-up statistic is an interesting one, and it would certainly be interesting to see a study of how closely council administrations mirror the national policies of their respective parties (especially so in the case of coalition administrations, i imagine).
We’ve all heard our fair share of scare stories, most of which are probably patchy in detail and therefore partisan in perspective. For instance, even within the Lib Dems, Brent council is often brought up as an example of a Lib Dem administration that isn’t doing well; yet my uncle is a local councillor in a Lib Dem/Labour ward there and gives an interesting picture of how, while the Lib Dems got some real numpties elected, the Labour people are astonishingly tribal, unco-operative, prepared to lie about literally anything and so on. The Labour opposition lied, for instance, about the Lib Dem/Tory coalition being set on closing the Kilburn one-stop shop, when really the administration wanted to move it to a building where they weren’t having to rent unnecessary space at great cost to the Brent taxpayer. In addition, the Labour group had given themselves across-the-board pay rises and abused the expenses system in their years in power, and then tried to accuse the coalition of the same thing when the Lib Dems were trying to block Tory efforts to do just that.
My point here is that while i’m sure there are bad Lib Dem administrations, and bad Labour ones, and bad Conservative ones, and while i immensely dislike the whole “well they’re probably all equally good/bad as each other”, the fact remains that the quality of local administrations is somewhat more of a mixed bad than any party is prepared to admit. Party is probably not even the most salient factor in determining quality of administration by a long way – i imagine wealth and house prices might be larger factors, for instance – but we simply don’t know if it is because i just don’t think enough academic research has been done on this question. Even with more research, though, the picture might still be misleading – local political factors are often so little known that even local people aren’t really in the picture, let alone people speculating about goings-on in areas on the other side of the country. Certainly the above example of Brent points to a set of local Labour councillors who may be rather uninformed (that’s certainly the most charitable explanation for their actions) about what the council is doing.
To conclude what may have, at times, acquire the character of a rant, i think it’s worth reflecting on the fact that the above problems relating to local council communication may well be a function of the fact that councils are so emasculated and unimportant on so many policy areas that most people don’t even really Need to care much about a) who’s in charge or b) what they’re doing, or c) why they’re doing it. Hence the decline in local newspapers that aren’t actually run and subsidised by the local council, and the other hallmarks of flourishing local politics and associational life. I genuinely think that the kind of localism that restores power to a local level would also probably restore interest in what goes on at a local level as a result. Who knows. I like localism for other, more salient reasons, but i occasionally ponder these things too.
Tuesday, March 16th 2010 at 18:38
I don’t know. Ming was a bit blink and you miss him, and clearly in internal politics terms, he was considerably weaker than Clegg, hence his speedy departure, but he did have a gravitas that Clegg can’t muster. If Campbell said something was out of the courage of his convictions, I’d be inclined to believe him. If Clegg said so, I’d think he’d been told to do so by focus groups.
I don’t ask for every policy that any party wishing to become a Government should outline all their policies in detail, and forgive me, if that’s what you think I was asking (I’m not always clear at the best of times, and I have a head cold making me feel more like a member of the Happy Mondays than any sort of sentient life form today). I do ask that a party be consistent throughout in it’s policies once they have been decided through an internal policy process. Otherwise what is the point of being a party at all? So if the Lib Dems nationally vote through a motion asking for at least 11gw more on shore wind by 2020, there should be internal consequences – up to and including expulsions – for those Liberal Democrats who take actions and decisions to make this this policy impossible to achieve, whatever their reasons for doing so (and sadly in the South West, it is usually political expediency).
I don’t think the party is “just” a depository for the disillusioned votes from other parties. I think that’s part of where your membership and votes come from – and will have to continue to do so if you are to achieve electoral success. Don’t write them off too quickly, or you’ll get stuck in the same rut Labour did in the 80s.
I don’t deny that Liberalism is a separate ideology from Socialism and Capitalism, though as all parties adjust to moving beyond post-industrial definitions, any purity in any philosophy is muddied by the reality of a globally inter-dependent community of one kind or another, making those of us who define ourselves by our ideologies think hard about what those ideologies mean to the modern world, and how to interpret them to produce the outcome we desire.
My personal experiences of Liberals behaving anything but liberally has certainly coloured my perspective. I have witnessed racially charged campaigns stirred up by local Liberal Democrats for electoral advantage and when these things were reported to the national party, no action was taken. These things stay with a person. But I also know a number of very nice Liberal Democrats (not least Mark above) who wouldn’t dream of behaving like that. What concerns me if that more than once and recently as well as way back these incidents have not been dealt with by the leadership, and that lets a whole party down.
So to return to my point, it’s not that local administrations sometimes fail, but that thet are repeatedly allowed to do so in the name of localism. Yet the things they are blocking are often exactly the kind of platform the party is standing on nationally.
I have my own questions about the localism agenda, and what it will really mean, but I think that’s probably meat enough for a new post another day when my head is swimming rather less!
Please do come back and “rant” some more – if only all ranters were so articulate!
Tuesday, March 16th 2010 at 22:46
“Given their strongest electoral asset tends to be their inability to be pinned down on specifics”
Really? I’ve certainly found the Lib Dems to be far more consistent than the Tories on issues such as taxation (raising of the personal allowance, coupled with measures to draw more revenue from higher income brackets*), education (pupil premium, devolution of control away from the centre), constitutional reform (firm commitment to transfer of specific powers back to Parliament (not surprisingly), unlike the prevaricating of the parties close to power or in it).
The Liberal Democrats’ peculiarity as a party, in fact, and one of the reasons why I think they find it harder to break through the electoral ceiling, is that they have a more democratic and policy-making party. Contrast this to the Tories, who can react very quickly to developments in the media. The Liberal Democrats risk internal division if attempts to move this way are made (see the furore over Mansion tax).
I think you can criticise the Liberal Democrats from quite a few angles — their leader has a mixed media presence at best, and some of their policies, such as abolishing tuition fees and possibly the fair taxation policy, would not achieve the results they would probably like. But I don’t think you can criticise them for lack of definition, without risking sheer hypocrisy. The only parties with a more detailed approach to policy are minor ones.
*Yes, I’ve looked at the Fabian report, and accept some of its criticisms, but I don’t think the policy can be attacked for lack of specifics — on the contrary, it’s the specifics the Fabian’s report attacks.
Tuesday, March 16th 2010 at 23:46
Well I think there been a fair amount of dancing around on tax policies as the different wings of the party have jostled for power, but it was other areas I was thinking of – in particular, and you’ll forgive me given my background this being the one area I can truly speak with authority on, their tensions between thier actions locally and nationally particularly with regard to climate change and wind policy.
Sunday, March 21st 2010 at 19:17
Ah, well I’ll admit to being woefully ignorant of the Lib Dems’ behaviour locally — they’re quite a minority force in the town council where I live, and I’ve only really followed one issue where the County council is concerned, which is about planning, and therefore doesn’t lend itself to national comparisons.