Nick Clegg - what will he give for a bite of power?

     
  Clegg                                                                                     a cleg

I have just watched Nick Clegg interviewed by Adam Boulton of Sky and heard him on Radio Four earlier today. On both occasions he was asked about preconditions for coalition in the event of a hung parliament. He says there are no preconditions.  If Cameron gets most seats, that would involve Clegg doing a deal with the Conservatives -  propping up a defeated Brown would simply not wash with the public in England. One Lib Dem contact on facebook this week advised "hold your nose" and vote in such a way that will guarantee voting reform next time around. But when was the last time you heard Clegg mention proportional representation? It used to by the first phrase on any Lib Dem leader's lips. But no previous Lib Dem leader has been so lip smackingly close to power.  In both the interviews, Clegg lists his priorities for reform: the £10k tax threshold, smaller class sizes, sorting out the banks/economy, and - it's always number four - "cleaning up politics". What does that mean exactly? After all, everybody wants to "clean up politics", even those who, like Clegg, were forced to pay back expenses money to parliament. This is not the same as changing the voting system. Unattributed newspaper reports have already been softening us up for this - suggesting that tax reform is more important that PR, which might be sacrificed in a Cameron/Clegg coalition.

In Scotland, we are used to Lib Dems not being quite living up to their sales pitch. They are all for local democracy and constitutional reform, but refuse to support a referendum on Scotland's future. They are supposed to be federalists, but support the Calman Commission, which falls far short of their favoured constitutional option and the commission headed by their elder statesman, Lord Steel.  They were so hostile to the SNP government, that they could not come together to create a sensible alternative to the council tax - which both parties had pledged to replace. Their insistence  that the leadership debates on television fairly reflected the options for Scotland put them in the very same camp as the "old parties" they denigrate. And how can the Liberal Democrats in Scotland justify a coalition with a governing UK party which is likely to have no seats and therefore no mandate here? They were leading players in the Scottish Constitutional Convention of the 1980s and 90s which was predicated on the Claim of Right document that upheld the traditional Scottish position that sovereignty lies with the people. 

Clegg - whose name means horse fly in Scots - has some things in his favour. A wife who refuses to be an appendage, a love for Samuel Beckett, and a vow to break up the banks. But that last one was Vince Cable's idea and as the Cleggmania has taken hold, St Vincent has been airbrushed out of the campaign. Is that a warning, I wonder?

I would therefore advise everyone to vote for what they believe in this Thursday...and avoid disappointment later on...

Comments

[indyleith]

Joan, the sheer hypocrisy of the Lib-Dems here in Scotland knows no bounds, they were for a local income tax along with the SNP but then refused to enter into talks with the SNP to rid Scotland of the council tax, Their free tuiton fees was also a con also which the SNP corrected, they failed (remember Finnie!) to represent us adequately in the EU fishing talks and yes they refused to have a coalition with the SNP in 2007 for the greater good as apparantly they sang from a similar hymn sheet as the SNP...until it comes to the crunch.

Hindsights a wonderful thing and i for one am glad that the SNP Went the way of minority government to show up the 3 London based parties for what they are at Holyrood.

That the Lib-Dems would join up with the Tories and not with the SNP shows them up for the same old same old unionist tweedle dem for what they are. They are not what it says on the tin but...has anyone told the English?

[Jo]

Hi Vronsky, the LibDems didn't get PR for Council Elections in Scotland, the Scottish people got it following a long period of Consultation done for the Scottish Parliament led by Neil McIntosh. The McIntosh Commission covered the length and breadth of the country and the message coming through was that PR was the favoured option for ordinary people actually working in communities. I remember it well as I was very involved in the process myself at the time. The Lib Dems have tried to steal credit but it was ordinary people that drove it, not them.

[Hamish Scott]

Joan

Yes, in the May 2007 election and its fallout, the Scottish Lib-Dems proved they were a unionist party first and a Scottish party second. Their abandonment of the substance of the Steel Commission for the relative superficiality of the Calman Commission was particularly mercenary. They did achieve PR for local elections though - progenitor of a slow-burning and largely beneath-the-horizon revolution in Scottish politics. If the UK Lib-Dems could get PR for Westminster that would also be an outstanding achievement. They may have gone quiet on it to encourage voters who aren't necessarily keen on PR and the kind of politics it produces. Or they may have sniffed power and made the necessary adjustments. Time will soon tell.

http://scottsrepublic.wordpress.com/

[Vronsky]

Yes, the major question on the Lib Dems is whether they will insist on PR if they have the opportunity, and it isn't looking good. It's interesting that in England they are perceived as 'different' whereas in Scotland we view them through a very different prism - we have seen them in power, and it wasn't pretty.

To be fair, they got PR for council elections in Scotland, and that substantially lifted Labour's foot from the neck of local democracy. But PR has much more radical implications for Westminster than for Scottish local authorities, and even if the LDs had the will for it I'm sure it would be prevented - by fair means or foul. So a prediction of no PR looks like a safe one.

[Jo]

Polls tonight show the Lib-Dem vote falling and have Labour in second.

On the tax threshhold increase to £10K however I want to know where he will get the money to fund this. We've been well warned in recent months that tax cuts are out for some time to come, so how can we afford this? £700 per person per year? It's going to cost a fortune. What is he planning to do to the basic rate?

And electoral reform is sliding down the list of priorities. What a surprise. Suddenly the slightest whiff of power and Nick is ready to deal, even with Tories. Ugh!