Can Clegg recover?
James Forsyth 11:23am
Nick Clegg has had a disastrous week. His comments about the number of women he had slept with have made him into a laughing-stock while his party’s position on the Lisbon treaty becomes more incoherent by the day.
Clegg’s interview with The Times this morning shows how difficult it is going to be for him to get past the Clegg-over business. Helen Rumbelow and Alice Miles press him repeatedly on the issue and you have to imagine that every other interviewer is going to do the same for the foreseeable future. Clegg does, though, say one interesting non Clegg-over related thing. When asked about coalitions he replied, “I don’t think about either of them in those terms – if you’re asking me to make a choice between Gordon Brown’s fatal flaw, his innate view that you can administer a better society from an office in Whitehall, and a mix of centralisation and technocratic arrogance, and David Cameron’s skin-deep commitment to social justice and almost total indifference to Britain’s place in the world, it’s a totally invidious choice to make.”
Maybe, I’m reading too much into this answer but it does seem that the condemnation of Gordon Brown is far more serious than the almost perfunctory, criticism of David Cameron. All of which suggests that the Tories wooing of the Lib Dems is beginning to pay dividends.
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Comments
Fergus Pickering
April 5th, 2008 11:56amNo of course he can't recover. The man's a fool. But then he's a Liberal Democrat so... Whetever is Vince Cable DOING in that party. He would surely be very comfortable on the left of the Tory party Come on Vince. It's not too late.
Ian C
April 5th, 2008 12:23pmReading the Morgan piece in the Telegraph it appears that Clegg was incredibly naive to even acknowledge the questions on his sexual history with an answer. That was his mistake and I although he should have known better (and is a fatuous politician) he has been mugged by that lowest of low-lifes, Morgan. The man should exiled from this planet. He is the dregs.
Nick
April 5th, 2008 12:55pmI can understand that many people feel Cameron's commitment to social justice is skin-deep but what does Clegg mean by "total indifference to Britain's place in the world" ?
Water
April 5th, 2008 2:09pmHmm yes very ambiguous
Max Kaye
April 5th, 2008 3:41pmI second Fergus Pickering's invitation to 'Killer' Cable. (And, of course, his scorn of Lib Dems in general).
Faceless Bureaucrat
April 5th, 2008 4:14pmThe Lib-Dems finally 'went terminal' the day they let Vince Cable slip through their fingers and elected Calamity Clegg as leader. Time for Vince Cable to decide whether he wants to lash himself to the Albatross that is the Liberal Democrat party, or take a chance on a Government post under Cameron and spend his later years as the respected Minister he is capable of being. If he decides on the former, it will be a tragic loss to British politics...
James
April 5th, 2008 4:22pmThere is this whiff of Student Union naivety about sections of our political class that is very strange.
Jessica
April 5th, 2008 10:09pmRather than going down the culdesac of thinking about coalition with the Lib Dems the tories should be kicking them whilst they are down.
Denis Cooper
April 6th, 2008 9:31amIt might be thought that the trap slammed shut on the Lib Dems the day that nominations for the leadership closed with two rabid europhiles as the only candidates, so members were denied the opportunity to choose a new leader who would keep faith with the electorate by supporting a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. However when I pointed this out to a local Lib Dem councillor he was pretty much unconcerned, believing that people were stupid enough to forget about it before the next general election. I suggest that the Tories should make damn sure that people do not forget about it. They could start by repeatedly asking whether voters can trust any promise made by any Lib Dem during the current local election campaigns.
Thomas Widmann
April 6th, 2008 12:08pmNick, I think his reference to Cameron's "total indifference to Britain's place in the world" means that he's worried that the Tories would either pull the UK out of the EU or be so negative that the relationship to our EU partners would be ruined for years to come.
In other words, I think he's saying that for the LibDems to support a Tory government, Cameron would have to guarantee that he'd be positive and constructive in his dealings with the EU.
RW
April 6th, 2008 12:58pmInteresting to see that, if only a small number of ballot papers hadn't missed the deadline for submission, Huhne would now be leader. It seems he got slightly more votes, in total, according to the Indy.
I can't believe he'd have been naive and self-absorbed enough to have got embroiled in PR foolery of the sort which has now given us Calamity Cleggover, Leader of the Libido Democrat Party (slogan: "Spread your love around"). The Clegg with the Third Leg. To quote but three of the more printable of the dreadful blog/MSM jokes which are going to run and run.
He'll be like Ashdown - every time you see him the word Pantsdown comes to mind. Makes it impossible to take him seriously. I sense a LibDem leadership re-re-re-election coming on.
Robert El=Cid.
April 6th, 2008 1:13pmLooks like Clegg took a long time to work out the female anatomy and become proficient at satisfying the ladies of his acquaintance. Perhaps he ought to launch a referendum on the subject of his prowess in that field amongst the ladies concerned. Meanwhile he has left countless millions of those opposed to the Lisbon Treaty/Constitution absolutely blazing at the way he, and the Labour Party to, have de-franchised the British voters. Perhaps at the next local elections they will find out where they have gone wrong.