In the end, I’d say Nick Clegg’s speech at the Lib Dem conference was so-so. The very good parts were offset by the very bad parts, and there was a chunk of neither-here-nor-there material in between. And all delivered in the now-ubiquitous, walk-around-the-stage-with-no-notes manner. If you want to read the whole thing, there’s a copy of it here. I’ll just deal with the two extremes:
The very bad
Clegg’s speech began like a stand-up routine. And a terrible one, at that. There was joke, after joke, after joke, at the expense of both Labour and the Tories. The Government were likened to the “living dead -They are a Zombie government. A cross between Shaun of the Dead and I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.” Whilst the Cameroons are “blue – but so are the Smurfs and toilet duck”. If the audience hadn’t been made up of the Lib Dem faithful, you’d have seen tumble weed roll across the conference centre floor.
But putting the humour (or lack thereof) aside, Clegg’s jokes were simply unwise to make in the light of some of the clangers he’s dropped over the past few days. Ribbing Cameron for being the “Andrex puppy of British politics – a cuddly symbol, perhaps, but fundamentally irrelevant to the product he’s promoting” can seem the slightest bit hypocritical from someone who, only yesterday, revealed he had no idea what the state pension is worth. And who announced that the Lib Dems are going to cold call 250,00 lucky members of the public tonight – in the middle of Coronation Street and Champions League football.
As for Clegg’s energy policy, a ‘Stevie’ on the BBC message boards gives a great response:
“I thought his speech was quite good until he said there will be no more nuclear power – how does he hope to reduce dependancy on rogue nations and fossil fuels when he thinks we can close down all our coal and gas power plants too? It’s nonsense – we cannot only rely on windpower and solar and certainly not ovenight. I mean, my so-called re-chargeable batttery for my phone only lasts 2 days!”
The very good
Once he’d stopped the ten-jokes-a-second shtick, Clegg started to outline how the Lib Dems would set about cutting taxes. Sure, there’s – rightly – plenty of scepticism about their back-of-an-envelope sums. But Clegg’s rhetorical approach is spot-on. The emphasis was very much on those members of the public who are struggling most in the face of the credit crunch, and on cutting government waste to free up funds. Here’s how Clegg put it:
“Using just a little of the money the government wastes every day to help people in their everyday lives – that doesn’t mean cutting help for the poorest, of course. It doesn’t mean stopping vital investment in hospitals and schools. It just means taking a cold, hard look at all government spending and asking a basic question: Is it working?
Every family in Britain is tightening their belts for the hard times ahead. It is time for government to tighten its belt too.
Labour has doubled government spending from £300bn a year to £600bn a year. That’s 18,000 pounds a second. They’ve taken, give or take a few, 16 million pounds of your money since I started speaking. It’ll be 38 million by the time I’ve finished. And if you clap for too long, it will cost us billions.
Does anyone in this room believe every single pound is spent well?”
It’s a simple message, but it’s one that wasn’t said much during the past decade, when the Labour mantra of “spending = investment; cuts = disinvestment” ruled supreme. Clegg is doing far more than most to further erode that crumbing consensus, and other politicians can learn from the language he’s employing in the process. It’s hard to agree completely with his claim that the Lib Dems are the “vanguard of British politics”. But in this single respect, that may be partially right.
Of course, this is just one viewer’s opinion. How will it play with a wider audience? I’m not sure. The fairer economy stuff has the potential to be popular, but the Lib Dems’ sliding opinion poll ratings suggest they’re hardly connecting with the voting public. The conference hall audience did seem to approve of speech – even the bits about cutting taxes. Clegg got warm applause throughout, and a standing ovation at the end – for all his talk of the Lib Dems heading for Government, I suspect he’ll be pleased enough with that.
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