Skip to main content

Nick Clegg will need to do better

I have refrained from commenting on the Lib Dem leadership election, partly because I am genuinely undecided and have been examining both candidates ideas. My initial reaction was to favour Nick Clegg. I had listened to his speech at Brighton and felt that he had put forward a genuinely modern, intellectually coherent and above all Liberal policy on Home affairs. Indeed on 18 Doughty St, I more or less said I would be supporting Nick Clegg. Nevertheless, I have also seen Chris Huhne put forward some genuinely radical policies- including taking the idea of Land tax seriously- which I think is a positive.

http://www.politicalbetting.com/, in something of a coup for its host Mike Smithson, has had both of the contenders on to answer questions from the large number of people who comment (not to mention the even larger number of people who read the site).

To my surprise, I must admit that Chris Huhne gave more coherent and more fully thought out answers- possibly because he was invited on a weekend and also answered far more questions, but what disappointed me more about Nick Clegg was this answer to a question Mike Killingworth put forward about the placing of Liberalism on the Political Spectrum:

"I am squarely part of the radical liberal tradition of British political thought. When I was young there were only two options: you either had a social conscience but were economically illiterate and voted Labour; or you were economically literate but had a heart of stone, in which case you voted Tory. That has now all changed. Politics is more fluid and society is more diverse. Liberalism is the creed of our times."

Why Disappointed?

Because Chris put it so much better:

"Left and right are old terms in a debate that is often about liberal and illiberal, authoritarian and laissez-faire. They apply to the particular 1945-1970 period of British politics when voting was largely explained by class. Now that voting is more open, and based on ideas and attitudes, there is a role for a big liberal party in British politics. My model is the Canadian Liberal Party, able to represent the half of the electorate who think of themselves as liberal."

Many of my friends have characterised the debate between the two candidates as "Huhne who can communicate to the party, but Clegg can communicate to the country". However, I am concerned that Nick is not crisp enough in communicating to his party or his country, whereas Huhne is coming across as more intellectually coherent. Having read in detail Chris' comment about Trident, I was very surprised to find that I agreed with him. Trident is not an independent nuclear deterrent, and if we need one, we can still have one without Trident. Chris is not being a unilateralist, whatever some remarkably ill tempered comments in the Lib Dem blogosphere may say. It was dishonest of Nick's team to try to tar Chris with that particular brush.

So, to my great surprise I am still undecided, I favoured Nick Clegg at first, I now find that Chris is coming across better. I am also not persuaded by Paddy and Shirley's email in support of Nick, partly because their judgement in the matter of the leadership has not been universally strong: they supported Charles, knowing that he had issues about drink, and also Ming, when perhaps we should have thought more carefully.

So, I will listen some more, but I an surprisingly uneasy with Nick Clegg's communication so far: he needs to provide more intellectual bottom to his campaign. To be honest I would like to see his manifesto- to match Chris's in clarity.

Could it even be- highly unlikely when the campaign began- that Chris Huhne gets my vote?

We shall see.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Actually, being Canadian, someone should probably point out to Huhne that the Canadian Liberal Party lacks any ideology of any sort.

Name aside they're not Liberal or Tory or Social Democrat or Conservative (though elements of all are there) but purely a brokerage party, concerned with power.

Why do they represent around 40% of the electorate on a good day (currently ~30%)? Because they are (or were) fantastically good at campaigning "left" promising the voters whatever they wanted, and then governing "right" in a usually practical fashion (with the exception of the madman Trudeau).

Although electorally the Canadian Liberal Party was the most successful of the 20th century, in terms of policy it was either the Progressive Conservatives or the NDP (the social democrat party) that came up with it… which the Liberals promptly stole if it was popular. We'll exclude, again, Trudeau because he was an objectively bad PM for the country.

In short, Huhne is using a policy free, ideology free, concerned purely with power political party as his role model.

Popular posts from this blog

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop

Media misdirection

In the small print of the UK budget we find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British Finance Minister) has allocated a further 15 billion Pounds to the funding for the UK track and trace system. This means that the cost of the UK´s track and trace system is now 37 billion Pounds.  That is approximately €43 billion or US$51 billion, which is to say that it is amount of money greater than the national GDP of over 110 countries, or if you prefer, it is roughly the same number as the combined GDP of the 34 smallest economies of the planet.  As at December 2020, 70% of the contracts for the track and trace system were awarded by the Conservative government without a competitive tender being made . The program is overseen by Dido Harding , who is not only a Conservative Life Peer, but the wife of a Conservative MP, John Penrose, and a contemporary of David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford. Many of these untendered contracts have been given to companies that seem to have no notewo

Bournemouth absence

Although I had hoped to get down to the Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth this year, simple pressure of work has now made that impossible. I must admit to great disappointment. The last conference before the General Election was always likely to show a few fireworks, and indeed the conference has attracted more headlines than any other over the past three years. Some of these headlines show a significant change of course in terms of economic policy. Scepticism about the size of government expenditure has given way to concern and now it is clear that reducing government expenditure will need to be the most urgent priority of the next government. So far it has been the Liberal Democrats that have made the running, and although the Conservatives are now belatedly recognising that cuts will be required they continue to fail to provide even the slightest detail as to what they think should guide their decisions in this area. This political cowardice means that we are expected to ch