Politicians boasting about the women they’ve slept with is not candour: it’s spin
Rod Liddle says that Nick Clegg’s toe-curling remarks are part of a deceitful tendency in the political class to tell us things about themselves that we don’t want to know rather than speaking the truth about policy
The excuse for this sudden incontinence, this priapic spurt from the confessional, was that these days, apparently, we have a new and welcome openness in our polity. Candour, we are told, is the new spin. You are asked a direct question and you answer it directly, without recourse to rebuttal units putting out a press release saying ‘actually it was only 14.65 women he slept with, exactly the national average according to a recent survey in the Observer, and on each occasion the sex was wholly consensual and left his stakeholder partners feeling moderately happy and reasonably fulfilled’. As it happens, Nick Clegg’s answer was the sort of answer a spin doctor might well have given; devoid of excessive sexual braggadocio, which none of us find attractive, but displaying a raffish modernity (‘30 — but my latest one is the best!’). But whether candour or spin, whatever way you look at it, there is no answer to the question which would not draw an elongated, pinch-faced ‘Eeewwwww, no, please...’ from the vast majority of the electorate. If he had said that he had slept with 5,000 women, we might have raised an eyebrow and wondered about his imagination. If he had said, ‘Well, actually, none — but I masturbate like a wizard, I can tell you,’ we would have made our excuses and left the polling booth for ever. But between those two poles, any answer was bound to make us squirm a little and think slightly the less of him. As it was, his answer was impeccably moderate, perfectly au courant, and of course it has still landed him in trouble. We all squirmed.
I think that this all comes from a misapprehension about the nature and purpose of candour in political discourse. It is undoubtedly the case that we’ve had enough of ‘spin’. By spin, though, I mean little party whores like Tom Kelly (now at New Labour’s wonderful spin-off project, BAA) defaming the name of the dead government scientist Dr David Kelly by likening him to Walter Mitty in an attempt to get his repulsive masters off the hook. Or his boss, Alastair Campbell, taking an unguarded, insupportable, throwaway remark, to the effect that Iraq’s military capabilities may at some stage enable Saddam Hussein to target British troops in Cyprus within 45 minutes, and shove it on the front page of a dossier as a reason to invade a sovereign country. Or Blair’s blithe insistence, over five long years, that the little document to be considered by the European Union countries does not remotely amount to a European constitution. Or, indeed, Gordon Brown’s creation of five utterly meaningless stipulations which would allow the UK to join the European single currency. Now that stuff was spin. Spin is either being disingenuous or (more often) telling a downright lie on an issue of importance to the electorate in order to secure for your political paymasters an electoral advantage. By contrast, candour would be saying (to cite one example) the following: ‘We think the European Union should have a constitution; this is because we believe Britain’s future lies in a federation of states with a single identity and a common goal. The nation state, as both a concept and a practical entity, is dead and buried.’ That would be candour — and there are plenty on the Europhile wings of the major parties who would have welcomed such a statement. The sort of statement which Tony Blair, among many others, has been heard to utter in unguarded moments.
But candour does not mean doing what Nick Clegg has just done. We don’t think any more highly of our politicians because they put a serious face on and answer directly questions which, if they were asked of us, would result in — at the best — a glass of wine being thrown in the face of the interlocutor. It does not mean conniving with the moronic inquisitions of Jonathan Ross, or telling us all that you really like the Arctic Monkeys when, if truth be told, you have never even heard the f***ing Arctic Monkeys. That is not candour; that is spin by another name.
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David Short
April 3rd, 2008 4:11pmI think that from now on this should be a compulsory question in all interviews with male politicians.
You can tell a lot about the man by the answer.
I know I'd have to sit down and think for a bit, not least about 'what counts' or not.
Which doesn't make me very proud of myself, but then again I'm not asking for your vote or wanting to lord it over you.
I wouldn't vote for any man who had more than three before getting married, and one of those three would have to be his wife.
And escort agency ladies don't count. Anyone who pays for it cannot be trusted.
We should excuse female politicians from this question. Call me old-fashioned.
Joanne
April 3rd, 2008 6:25pmWell now we know Clegg is a Lib Dem in bed as well! Not good not bad.....blah blah blah
Noblesse Oblige
April 4th, 2008 12:50amClegg's boorish insensitivity strikes me as relatively benign and victimless (the conquests are not named) by comparison with that of the pachyderm Edwina Currie, whose victims were, and were intended to be Mr and Mrs Major. By definition, women are not gentleman. But Clegg may once have been one. Even looked at on his own terms, thirty is hardly a number to boast about. Some men do not disclose it to the world, but have hundreds, even thousands of conquests. His boast therefore is meaningless on every level.
Kevyn Bodman
April 4th, 2008 6:00amNick Clegg is a fool for answering the question.
Is he a fool in other areas, too?
Rod Liddle is correct, candour on genuine policy issues is to be desired.
We don't get it because some politicians are scared to articulate their policy positions and because some haven't thought about them.
These factors contribute to the disrespect and even scorn that many people, I proudly include myself in this category,have for many politicians.
TomTom
April 4th, 2008 6:34amWas this during his time as an MEP ? He must have done something to while away the time
Blue Porcupine
April 4th, 2008 8:22am"I wouldn't vote for any man who had more than three before getting married, and one of those three would have to be his wife."
Then you, David Short, are what's wrong and sick about this country.
Blue Porcupine
April 4th, 2008 9:57amIncidentally, while I think it's right to be suspicious of politicians' motives in giving interviews, Clegg as much as anyone, it simply isn't true that the Lib Dems are reluctant to make policy positions clear.
There are more costed Lib Dem policy papers, reviews, reports, executive summaries etc in the public domain than there is for both the other two parties put together. You think Rod Liddle has ever bothered to write about any of that? Rather undercuts his own point, IMHO.
Concerned citoyens of the centre-right intelligentsia should go and read Lib Dem policy papers and argue out any weaknesses, not sling this particularly childish and disproveable sort of mud.
http://www.libdems.org.uk/party/policy/
Austin Barry
April 4th, 2008 1:00pmThe possibly unconscious sub-text of Clegg's confession is that he is a potent successor to leaders who through age or alcohol may have been otherwise. Unfortunately though he is the leader of a party of institutionalised impotence and no crass tallying of personal caperings can elevate a eunuch into Priapus.
Kevyn Bodman
April 4th, 2008 4:13pmBlue Porcupine may be correct about the LibDems' published policy positions; and until a few weeks ago I would have applauded them for it.
But Clegg's utterly disgraceful tactics over the Lisbon Treaty refrendum vote (a whipped abstention, absurd) has blown all his, and their credibility.
That reaction might be extreme, it might not be strictly rational even, but politics is about perceptions as much as reality and Clegg is seen as a smoothy shyster.And now a sleazeball.
Calamity Clegg.
This is It
April 4th, 2008 4:20pmIt can be hard to tell whether it is pure foolishness or mis-placed prudence. I remember the fellow taking over the New York governorship from Elliot Spitzer - the blind guy taking over from the hypocrite. He felt it prudent to go ahead and tell about the bad spot in his marriage where he & his wife had both temporarily found someone else. In his case, the (perhaps) misplaced prudence is understandable. Not sure about Clegg.
Harry Osbourne
April 4th, 2008 8:00pmIt simply boils down to the fact that that Nick Clegg, in answering the question, has demonstrated that he is not a gentleman; not that we expect that quality in our politicians anyway any more.
Contrast Nick with Ken, now there's a man who's a doer, not a talker.
feverpill
April 4th, 2008 8:31pmShort, you're old-fashioned.
Max Kaye
April 5th, 2008 9:35pmClegg's first error was talking to Piers Morgan. His second was not saying something along the lines of "this is none of your, or anybody else's, business".
Ken is into newtonian biology: amphibians do spawn, after all.
Tim Chapman
April 7th, 2008 3:33amRon Liddle says Mr Tsvangirai makes him twinchy. It's a sensible reaction. I expect that if he takes over from the current incumbent monster, his country will still be disfunctional a few years from now. I sthere any evidence from the history of Africa to predict otherwise?
Hugh Wain
April 7th, 2008 11:36amWell said.
Tony S
April 7th, 2008 1:05pmAs you touched on the subject of knocking one out Rod. I bet you knocked this off in five minutes, probably setting a record in the process; nice one.