Written by Abeer Sharma | 22 November 2010
Posted in Comment - Britain

Nick Clegg after joining the Coalition government. Photograph: Crown Copyright

In my first article, I examined how Liverpool Football Club had slumped alarmingly from title contenders to mid-table also-rans within 17  months. I would contend that their decline has not been as pronounced and sharp as Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s since May.

A brief flashback to the first debate in mid April, and Cleggmania (now officially a word in the Oxford Dictionary) got underway. Nick Who? Became ‘I agree with Nick’ overnight. The Liberal Democrats manifesto pledges to abolish student tuition fees, scrap Trident and raise the threshold of when people start paying income tax to £10,000 won them attention and support, particularly amongst the student demographic. While Gordon Brown set about destroying his core support with the Gillian Duffy faux pas and David Cameron struggled to convince that he and right hand man George Osborne were not Bullingdon Club ‘hooray Henry’s’, Clegg surged in the polls on the back of virtuous performances in the televised debates. It was suggested that the Liberal Democrats may capture as many as 80 seats, unthinkable a few months previously.

Unfortunately for Clegg and his party, election night did not go as planned. The Liberal Democrats won 57 seats, down six from 2005. This was a kick in the teeth for Clegg, who saw the hype manifest into embarrassment. Yet Clegg and his party struck gold when it emerged that neither Labour nor the Tories won the requisite seats to form a majority Government. After days of political horse-trading, the Labour government came to an end and the Con-Dem coalition were born.

Since then, Clegg has endured a difficult period. He would have preferred to avoid the deep Tory devised cuts to the economy to which his party are now attached to. Trident does not look like it is going away soon and recently, the rise in tuition fees has been his biggest headache. Clegg’s pre election signed pledge to remove tuition fees is embarrassing in light of the decision to lift them to a maximum of £9000. As Charlie Brooker stated in his own article about Nick Clegg, ‘Cleggsy Bear’ (Booker’s allusion to Pudsey Bear) has become a ‘universal disappointment sponge for disenchanted voters’. He cuts a sullen and almost tragic figure, forced to peddle the coalition motto of “We didn’t know just how bad it was” at the same time as backing Tory policies he used to argue persuasively against.

Many harbour resentment towards Clegg, but what exactly did those who voted for him expect? The Liberals had been deprived of a semblance of power since the Lib-Lab pact in 1979, thus they were effectively given a licence to pledge whatever they wished and attack the other parties for their previous failures without (a) being held to account for their own failures due to not being in power and (b) having any realistic hope of assuming office. Neither the average person nor Clegg (I presume) surely believed he would be anything other than an addition to an extensive list of Liberal leaders to be an irrelevance. Out of the blue he found himself to be Kingmaker and faced with the realisation he may finally have scope to introduce some Liberal Democrat policy and have his promises taken to task.

When he signed the pledge to abolish tuition fees he almost certainly did so in the expectation that he would not be in the Government dealing with the outcome. We are all aware that saying and doing are not the same, a sentiment never as intrinsically true as in politics, a world where a politician’s promises count for little. Clegg did not truly believe and neither did the public so his promise was more to gain student support than a truly viable option. If the Liberal Democrats had been competitive, Clegg would have avoided such a grandiose gesture. After all, Labour and the Conservatives never went near making such pledges, instead adopting a more restrained and humble approach with a dash of the idealism needed to capture the hearts and imaginations of voters. In other words, they conducted themselves like major parties going for an election win, the Liberal Democrats did not.

The Liberal Democrats are clear junior partners in the coalition. They were highly fortunate to be in Government as only a Labour stronghold in the most ethically diverse constituencies of London meant an outright victory eluded the Tories. As the Liberal Democrats conspired to lose seats, it would be ludicrous to expect them to call the shots. Invaluable in the formation of a majority Government as they were, 57 seats is paltry leverage for a substantial share of power. However, despite the dichotomy in the quantity of seats the Tories and Liberal Democrats have, the Liberal Democrats secured five cabinet ministers, a referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) system and their policy on income tax implemented. This is a more than satisfactory extraction from an abysmal election performance. Clegg and his party cannot realistically hope to wield more power than they currently do; election performance alone dictates that the Tories must dominate with a mandate six times greater than their coalition partners.

Those who voted for Nick Clegg, particularly the students who constituted much of his support, are entitled to feel aggrieved by his U-turns. In my view, Clegg’s lack of visible fight against the tuition fee rises in particular makes him the subject of numerous students ire and has sullied his political reputation in the eyes of many. However, those with a basic knowledge of politics recognise it is very much a game of compromise; those who operate within its sphere do not deal in black and white. Feel free to vent well-justified spleen at Clegg, but be proportionate, his situation is far from ideal.

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