Nick Clegg and the Jilted Bride

Polittiscribe

Well it's a great myth and no doubt that'll become the orthodoxy on the left. But truth will tell it differently. When the electorate rejected every party, all policies, manifesto's and principles were also rejected. The Coalition was formed through compromise, co-operation and not a little courage. None of us voted for it. But I wake every morning thankful that honest, open, gifted and above all liberal men govern us.

Tron

The LimpDems only got 50 odd seats. If you want to put all your policies into practice you need more seats than everyone else. It's called democracy, you might explain it to those teenagers.
Then you could explain what Labour meant when they left that note- "there's no money left, good luck!"
Another life lesson for the young is "Don't give all the nation's money to a Scotsman called Gordon Brown."
When you look at the damage Gordon and his mates have done to the present and future of those kids, well, Nick doesn't look so bad.

normanc

More interesting numbers would be how many non Con, Lab, Lib-Dem voters would intend to vote that way.

Holding on to your core vote is important, but if Dave has shown us one thing the last five years it's that politicians should never be afraid of ditching any pretence to values to chase other Parties voters.

Of course, it lost him the unlosable election but let's not let facts get in the way of a grand theory.

Matt T

I agree with Nick (Cohen). Clegg belongs to a specific Blair/Cameron model of politician of which Bill Clinton was the ideal form. They are successful because they can use the media to present themselves as pragmatic centrists who can offer all things to all people in a post-ideological world. When it turns out that actually there are hard ideological choices to be made (for example over Iraq or public spending) people turn on them. Without a natural constituency to support them through thick and thin they become widely despised. It happened to Blair, its happening to Clegg and in the end it will do for Cameron as well.

This was the politics of the boom. The crash will probably bring competing ideological visions back into politics and maybe a less irritating model of politician too.

PS. Great to have Nick Cohen on the Coffee House, he is one of the best centre-left writers around. Nice to see the Spectator trying to offer a plurality of voices, even if it is only in their online presence, when so much of the press, particular on the right, seem to devote their opinion pages to reinforcing the prejudices of their readership.

Fergus Pickering

Thank God the idiot young were properly ignored. If we listened to them what would we get? Well, in Brighton, where the average age of the electorate is nineteen and a half we've got Sarah Lucas.

Clegg will get the heave-ho by and by, but at least he'll have BEEN somebody. Ditto old Vince and the red squirrel. Then we can get back to flatulent nobodies like old Charles and old Menzies aand old Paddy and (well of course) eternally young Simon.

Tommy Judd

Polittiscribe and Tron, I promise you (from the inside) that Nick Cohen is right about the tuition fees policy. And I agree with the reform and hope to see the ceiling removed in time. Clegg and the leadership were not prevented from implementing a policy of abolishing fees; they never believed in it. They signed the pledge because it didn't cross their mind they would join a coalition government.

Vulture

My MP Norman Baker is one of only about half a dozen Lib Dem MPs who will retain their seats at the next election. Nick Clegg will not be among them - but he'll probably have formally joined the Toiries by then.

I cheer Norm up by telling him that they'll all be able to go to conferences in a single taxi cab again - it will save a fortune on exes.

Twas ever thus with coalitions : the smaller party gets swallowed.

@ Matt T: Althopugh I agree with Matt in welcoming Nick Cohen to CH I cannot agree that there is a 'pluraity' of voices here.
All the male voices on CH : Bright, Massie,
Liddle, Nelson, Korski, Blackburn sing from the same left-wing song-sheet.

The only one who tells it like it actually is, especially about Islam is a woman: mad Mel. The rest are leftie-liberals, so where's the 'plurality' there?

Incidentally, Nick - who are 'your people' who you keep referring to?: a couple of dozen repentent media Labourites in north London. Those are 'your' people. You are about as representative of any constituency as Scientologists.

Sarah AB

As a Labour voter I find it difficult to disagree with this post. But at the same time I think Nick Clegg was probably right to go into a coalition with Cameron (though obviously I hope the Lib Dems' performance sends voters back to Labour). He said he'd try to work with the party with most seats, so that's at least one promise he did keep! If he'd held out for a bit more help for the disabled people who are going to lose their mobility allowance, or for the students who voted Lib Dem in such droves, rather than making changing the electoral system such a priority, then his party might be doing rather better in the polls.

stylo

Nick - what's your position on tuition fees?

EdW

People who vote for politicians can expect to get screwed. New Labour did it to us and now it's the LibCon coalition's turn. That's how democracy works. If you want to change things the only way is outside and against the political system.

Kevin Barry

For many, many, years the Liberal Democrats have been given an extremely easy time the 'meedya'.Lib Dems have always liked to portray themselves as 'sensible', 'middle of the road', and proclaimed 'a plague on both houses' of the two main parties.

We are now witnessing a sustained examination of the Lib Dems, and as for many of us who have campaigned against them on a local level, people will discover that they a duplicitous, opportunist bunch.

Roll on May 2015

firefly

This might be the accepted leftie orthodoxy but the truth is that Labourites were spitting feathers over the perceived 'betrayal' from the moment the coalition with the Tories was formed - nothing to do with promises and everything to do with tribalism.

If Labour are supposedly so bothered about integrity and MPs telling the truth, why was Woolas appointed as Shadow Immigration Minister? Telling outright lies to get elected is fine if it's a Labour MP, eh! And inciting racial hatred is fine too, apparently. Not to mention your own U-turns on tuition fees in the past.

You're only berating the Lib Dems for doing things that you did yourself while in power for 13 years. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

stereodog

Perhaps Mr Cohen 'your people' should also have believed Nick Clegg when he said that he would try to govern with whichever party had the popular mandate. If 'your people' voted for him hoping he would break that promise and prop up Labour then you have no right to complain about him breaking his promise on tuition fees.

As to the Lib Dems being a young person's party, if more of them bothered to vote then the Nick Clegg might not now have had to sacrifice some of his flagship policies.

I usually like to be moderate on these pages as there are too many ranters in the world but this post is absolute dross. Tell me what would have been the more honourable course of action for Clegg to take, prop up a Labour government that had been defeated? Or maybe you would like him better if he forced an election on every point of compromise? The hypocrisy of the media really is stunning sometimes. Suppose Nick clegg refused to compromise on tuition fees and withdrew from the government. He would be crucified in the papers for putting a party issue above the stability of the country.

Fiona

I agree with Nick (Cohen).

The Lib Dems have always been cynical opportunists - all things to all voters, saying anything to get elected. Oh the irony of Simon Hughes parading for the cameras in Oldham & Saddleworth. I remember the same St Simon of Southwark putting out election leaflets designed to look like Labour Party literature, which contained all sorts of mad and untrue stuff.

This time it has all backfired spectacularly, as they found themselves in a horrible "morning after" nightmare when they woke up in bed with the Tories.

This unexpected development means a whole generation of voters, who voted in May for the first time in their lives, have now pledged never to vote Lib Dem again.

Never mind - I'm sure the Tories will find a nice safe seat for Clegg before the next election.

Newmania

I detest that bit in 'love actually'...

It would be easier to stomach the lies on tuition and child benefit(Cameron`s version)if the coalition were not going to so easy on anyone with power

The high ranking featherbedded Public Sector should be experiencing the sort of pay cuts and savage renegotiations to working conditions the rest of us have.

Why are we still handing out gimmick freebies to oldsters,bus passes, for example,when they are richest people in the UK.
What on earth do we think we are playing at throwing £15 billion at international charity.

Each of these groups has power,Unions a block vote and a well placed Liberal vote at the marginals
The coalition seems to driven by the principle of political survival and no other.

The heir to Blair indeed but who do I vote for ?

Nicholas

Richard Curtiss' creation of the New Labour English Gentleman is as mythical as previous stereotypes of that male. The core "decency" you refer to once ran through the English as a race, not just through upper class males born into fortune. Socialism's four decades of re-jigging Britain just resulted in one dominant elite being replaced by another. Peter Whittle in Standpoint effectively demolished Curtiss as overrated - "the swingingly happy ensemble in Love, Actually represented the 'happy-clappy, vibrant and diverse' version of London that even now remains the official line on the capital city, and which, as a solidly liberal middle-class top-down view, was barely recognisable to millions of Londoners."

It's the squeezed and endangered yeomen class that probably best represented the qualities you describe but they have no identity and no voice in modern Socialist Britain. Their toil "performed or rendered in a loyal, valiant, useful, or workmanlike manner" is seldom seen today, amidst the clouds of propaganda, bullshit, delusion and emotional hysteria that serves the public narrative.

Pot Head

Nicholas, well Love Actually was a hugely successful film, taking over $250M at the box office globally, and just the kind of British film, Cameron said last week at PMQ's, that the British film industry should be making .

And, I have no doubt that your yeoman class will tuning in their droves when Love Actually get's it's inevitable airing on the TV this Christmas. It's the elites that will looking down their noses and changing channels.

Fergus Pickering

Well of course they didn't believe in the abolition of tuition fees. Do you? Does anybody? But to be a Lib Dem you have to sign up to a load of drivel which goes down well with the idiot young, like windmills and the social wage (remember that)and free organic beer for all the non-workers and Bob bloody Geldof. Brrrr!

Nicholas

Pot Head - Whittle's article was that Curtiss is overrated not that the film was not successful! Plenty of rubbish films make millions and plenty of good ones fail.

I don't think you know what "my" yeoman class actually is. Best go back to your crack pipe.

Archibald

How many of them were actually elected on the tuition fees pledge? Were there any seats close enough to make a guesstimate on?

Even though I disagree with their initial policy, it's pretty simple to see how single issue voters seeing someone sign a pledge might be a teeny tiny bit annoyed, especially if they swung the seat from Tory or Labour to Lib Dem.

To be honest, while it gets coverage I'm surprised there hasn't been more coordinated protest at specific seats.

Am I the only one that doesn't see the difference between this and our good friend Mr Woolas?

David Ossitt

“They, by contrast, had always been the nice people in the nice party – maybe a little silly, maybe a little naïve, but fundamentally decent.”

Oh please; we have known for many years that the Liberal Democrats where the party who never had any hope of power.

That is the reason why they could formulate election manifestos that were unworkable twaddle.

It is also the reason why a large proportion of Liberal Democrats of both sexes and all ages are doppelgangers of Lembit Opik that sad mad boy child excuse for a man.

Simon Denis

This is nonsense, Mr Cohen. It is well known that Coalition involves compromise and the Libdems, being supporters of PR and by extension of coalition in principle are perfectly within their moral rights to chop and change. Their pitches to the electorate down the years have always involved, therefore, a form of not-so-small print which allows for this or that policy proposal to be watered down or rejected.

Furthermore, they have used their concessions to the Conservatives to demand - and obtain - concessions from the Conservatives - for the most part graciously given. There is little doubt, for example, that a purely Tory government would have closed the door on further political reform; might well have ditched the 50% tax rate; would quite possibly be mooting the dilution of our EU commitments. A convinced Conservative might have to say, Would that it were so. And yet we hear no suggestion that the Tories are "unprincipled" and of course they - we - are not. We too understand that a mutually acceptable programme for the good of a country in a truly parlous financial state - thanks to your friends on the left - had to be worked out and fast. This involved compromise of dire necessity and was by far the more honourable path than the one implicitly suggested to the Libdems in your criticisms.

Are you sure that your hostility is not motivated by a tribal left wing panic that the centre has deserted you? That the right is no longer to be left out in the cold? And are you not - as a body of thinkers - turning the guns of synthetic outrage wherever you may in the cynical hope of vexing the Tory right or stampeding the Liberal left?

The Tory mammoth will stroll forward regardless of the left's jackal-like snarls, but the poor old Liberal moose can only be driven to shelter more closely under our tough old flank by these transparent and unworthy tactics.

Edward McLaughlin

Nick, maybe 'your people' make the mistake of watching crappy films and TV dramas, put together entirely by people of virulent leftist outlook, and composed of the unremitting belief that the experiment of the last 45 years is really how this world works.

To join in with your obvious penchant for the tortured metaphor, the sad news from Earth is that the cocoon is smashed and the party is over.

'Your people' can use their vote whichever way they choose next time; whoever gets in, money will need to be yanked because money - and the bestowal of its various benefits - has in the past been regarded as a 'right'.

(That Tess? She dies in the end, yes? That's just awful)

Derek

Nicholas writes "The core "decency" you refer to once ran through the English as a race, not just through upper class males born into fortune."

Right; e.g see Charles Dickens (passim). Isn't it the attack on that core, and the extensive success of the attack, which is at the heart of our grief for our country and our anger at the perpetrators? Perhaps the injection of islamic culture, noted by Mr. Neather, will reverse the trend.

Stuart Seacole Smith

One of the earlier commenters referred to Nick Cohen's joining as a Speccie blogger as contributing to the plurality of voices.

In as much as it is one more voice, I suppose it does. But fine writer that Nick C undoubtedly is, another soft-left confused labour supporter certainly doesn't expand the breadth of opinion on the Spectator - it's just more of the same in my book.

Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to reading Nick C's blogs, but at the same time what I'd really like as well is some intelligent, balanced, but robust true-Conservative, right-of-centre commentary. Is that really asking too much of the Spectator?

BTW, I find that clip from Love Actually excruciatingly embarassing. Even more so than when Grant does that eye-coveringly embarassing Tom Cruise-style spontaneous solo dance in the same film. Shudder.

yank

That Love Actually scene is a straight up rip off from "The American President", a Rob Reiner Hollywood film intended to glorify and ingratiate the presidency as Bill Clinton was being attacked here. Presumably this Hugh Grant clip was intended the same way there. It has the same stirring music and excited crowd reactions, as the great man awakens, finds himself and speaks out strongly.

Just pure boob-bait. Gag me with a spoon.

AF

Well, as I said yesterday...
Clever Speccie they know how to get our blood up AND here we go.
Nick posts his 'first' centre left idea which flies in the face of most CH readers.
AND we turn out in our droves to confront him, how clever is that?
He's hardly preaching to the converted (well not yet)
AND his people certainly aint our people.

AF

Yank,
let me tell you, Hugh Grant some have considered has set back british manhood by a century.

rippon

The message I posted to 'Contact Nick Clegg':

You and Vince Cable are the most repugnant men in British politics, more sickening even than Tony Blair and his sincerity.

I voted LibDem but now feel embarrassed and ashamed for supporting you, someone who has plumbed new depths in dishonesty, mendacity, hypocrisy and all-round moral depravity. You +ought+ to be ashamed, but you are clearly so self-serving that shame is outside your range of feelings.

You deserve to be annihilated electorally, and in other ways too, e.g. your life turns to sh*t, you sink into depression and, for the country’s benefit, you remove yourself from our society (e.g. top yourself).

Sarah AB

I always thought Hugh Grant was like Tony Blair - in fact I remember (quite a long time ago) listening to a fair amount of a Desert Island Discs interview with Tony Blair feeling quite sure that Hugh Grant was the castaway.

JohnBUK

Yes, it's very easy to have principles and ideals when they don't "cost" YOU anything (the young who don't pay for their whims and the LibDems who didn't think they'd ever have to enact them) the applause and adoration must be wonderful not to mention the "pious" awards. But sadly when the bill finally arrives it's amazing how those ideals look terribly expensive. Welcome to Earth.

RichieP

Polittiscribe
November 23rd, 2010 12:25am
'But I wake every morning thankful that honest, open, gifted and above all liberal men govern us.'

Unless this was intended as irony (which I doubt), it's comments like this that make me believe in parallel universes.

St Bruno

What the country desperately needs IMHO is some ferrets and weasels in the political system to kill off the over-population of fluffy bunny rabbits that keep popping up out of their expensive holes now and again.

Then maybe, just maybe, work can start on getting Britain back on the tracks.

Even if it means having a general election in the early new year, instead of some wishy-washy referendum about re-arranging deck chairs on the monkey island. The Tory party should tell the Liberal / Social Democratic Party to pack its bags and go back to oblivion on the dark side were it belongs in truth, not as part of the ruling elite. Lets get a true party in power with the guts to hurt some feelings to put things in order instead of prating about in the long grass avoiding the elephants.