to think Nick Clegg has sunk to new lows during this interview?

[NotFromConcentrate]

Jeremy Vine has just played the audio of Nick Clegg's election campaign video during which he categorically stated no more broken promises. He then went on to outline the lengths Clegg went to to drive home his promise not to allow the raising of tuition fees.

Asked to explain himself, Nick Clegg said (petulantly) "Well, we didn't win". So basically he's saying "Thanks for the votes, suckers, but I'm not in Number 10 therefore you can whistle for whtever crap I promised"

Apologes for the lack of coherence, but I am still spitting feathers!

P.S. Be gentle; this is my first AIBU (I think!)

I think it's safe to say that LD's will never be running the country on their own in the future...he's almost certainly seen to that.

let's face it, attacking Nick Legg is like shooting fish in a barrel

the Liberals laid the foundations of the Welfare State at the beginning of the last century and now they're- at best- standing veeeeeery quietly by while the government they helped form pulls it apart

notfromconcentrate I agree that there should be no place for petulance and childishness in politics, but a quick glance at any PMQs will show that a good deal of parliamentary politics is made up of precisely that.

As for Clegg's 'no more broken promises', I'm not sure that anyone anticipated a hung parliament resulting in a Lib-Con coalition. It's embarrassing for him to be now in the position of breaking promises having got all hoity-toity about it before, but saying he should have looked into his crystal ball and anticipated this is a bit beside the point.

I think it's symptomatic of a wider problem the Lib-Dems are facing. In essence, they're having to grow up very fast: having been out of power for a very long time, they've got into the habit of writing an 'In an ideal world...' type manifesto, safe in the almost-certainty that they didn't stand a chance of getting in and having to try and implement it.

The problem is, of course, that they're now in power - but as a minority party in a coalition. So they're suddenly in a position where they have to start giving ground, with a fairly weak hand, against their coalition partners in order to get some of their projects through. From the perspective of people who voted for them, each issue they've abandoned looks like a squalid betrayal, both of their voters and also of their high moral position.

It seems to me that Lib Dem voters have to choose between being idealists, and having the moral high ground but very little power, or being pragmatists, and compromising sometimes for the sake of having more influence. I can understand that some Lib Dem voters feel betrayed, but I find it odd that the response to their party being a minority partner in power, and hence having to compromise, is not to campaign harder so they're the majority last time. Instead, Lib Dem voters seem to be saying 'Well I won't vote for them again' - which means they'll be back to having no power at all. This seems perverse to me; but then I'm a pragmatist, not an idealist.

Many of the changes the Lib Dems have brought to the coalition are good ones.

In particular, increasing the bottom income tax threshold; stopping child benefit for top earners; more accountability in local health; more decentralisation; more liberty; certain liberal aspects of justice policy; more of a focus on tax evasion.

Many of the changes they have brought have been awful. They have made it impossible to effectively put up a fight against the EU and ECHR; they have put a nasty redistributive sting in the tuition fees policy; in general, they insist on playing by Labour's stupid rules on "progressiveness"; they want massive new green taxes; etc.

The Lib Dems have outright lied on tuition fees - however, the new policy is, by and large, pretty good. They have to make the transition from being a party of protest to a party of government - and they should have realised that before the election. Going round signing every bit of paper waved in your face isn't a very sensible strategy.

I agree with pottonista and ccpccp - and I say that as a Lib Dem voter who still cares about election reform and will most likely vote Lib Dem next time as well.

I'd trade idealism for influence any day, even if that does mean compromising some principles initially.

Idealists who aren't willing to compromise never achieve their goals, however, pragmatists who understand that they can't get everything they want overnight, or that it is not always sensible pick up their ball and go home if someone bigger and more powerful is choosing the game often get a little of what they want and more and more of it over time.

I also don't think the level to which the Lib Dems have moderated many of the Tory policies should be underestimated - the cuts would have been a whole lot worse on those that could least afford it if it had been a solely Tory decision and tuition fees would have been unlimited.

There will have been a lot of negotiation going on behind closed doors between the Lib Dems and the Tories that we will never be privy to. Nick Clegg has to take the flack without being able to defend himself due to the confidential nature of cabinet negotiations - and I think he's doing an OK job of it actually.

They have sold out and have lost one of their biggest support bases (students) over this. I can't see many students voting for them again and honestly I would be suprised if the party still existed in any significant form after the next election.
Vote reform is a tricky one - a lot of people supported this because they were lib dem or minority party supporters and it would have helped their party. As lib dem approval ratings are in the toilet at the moment they have just lost some of their support base for vote reform.
Certainly not everyone but a lot of people only cared about vote reform because they were lib dem supporters, it wasn't their reason for supporting the lib dems IYSWIM.

I don't think it is 'idealistic' to expect a party to honour its election pledges.

I don't think it is 'idealistic to expect a party that campaigned so hard over tax avoidance and bringing the financial sector to some sort of accountability for their actions over the past few years to suddenly drop that too,as fast as it can.

I don't think it's 'idealistic' to be disillusioned when a party - when polls were saying they had had a surge in popularity, 'Clegg-factor' etc after the debates (and so thought they'd do better in the general election than they had done for decades) - makes a song and dance of literally signing pledges on a flagship policy only to drop it like a used hankie the moment it seems opportune to do so.

As a voter, I do expect political parties to at least honour their election pledges, however unsavoury they may be - how on earth are we meant to decide who to vote for otherwise? They may as well give us a bit of magic paper with 'see what you want to see written here' on it.

I voted Lib Dem as I foolishly believed they would at least stick to some of their principles in a coalition govt. I am simply astonished at how quickly and without even the pretence of a token struggle they've capitulated over just about every principle once they had a sniff of power - except voting reform, which is again purely for their own self-interest.

To then find out that they had no intention of honouring the tuition fee pledge even as they made it I think is about as dishonest as it gets, politically. If Phil Woolas can be prosecuted for making false claims, why aren't Clegg et al in the dock?

No wonder they are a laughing stock. And Lady BlaBlah, that's my quote of the week that is. I think you should offer that to the NUS as a t-shirt slogan.

So, no OP, YANBU.

Ah, well. He was caugaht between a rock and a hard place when Dve sked him to form colition with the Tory scum; Form a coalition with Tory scum and compromise his principles but get to sit next to Dave in Parliament and have his picture taken OR not form a coalition, stick by his principles but not get to be Dave's BFF.

Principles aren't worth a penny to idiots of his kind.

Sorry about typos, posting from iPhone

"I don't think it is 'idealistic' to expect a party to honour its election pledges."

No - you're right, that's not idealistic, that's naive.

There has never been a political party that hasn't broken an election promise. People only seem to notice broken promises if they directly affect them.

Nick Clegg looks like a dodgy insurance salesman.

Please don't insult salespeople

If politicians honoured every single pledge and promise they made then we can't have a coalition agreement. Promises,pledges and manifesto committments are going to go as part of a coalition as the different parties have different policies and you can't implement both so one is always going to get dropped.

same old shit, different arsehole - each and every time in politics.

I don't have a problem with Clegg going back on pre election promises. They all do it. Labour, Tories and Lib Dems.

I do have a problem with Clegg's arrogance and petulance. He's the DPM and is acting like a spoilt brat. In fact he's a stereotypical public school toff - now I know "they're" not all like that but he's not exactly doing a great job in the whole "we're in this together" bullsh*t.

Out of curiosity - how many of you LD supporters used to be labour supporters until the televised election debates, and are now turning back to labour again?

I think a lot of people watched the debates and were impressed with Cleggs promise of something new, causing a relieved exodus from both Tory and Labour. Nothing 'new' has happened though yet, just cuts.

Okay, so I might have this wrong, but I think the tories could have tried to govern with a minority government, no?

No-one forced Clegg to get into bed with the tories, did they?

He had the option of keeping the Lib Dems out of a coalition governmen and instead voting in favour of policies they agree with and against those they don't.

At least that way the Lib Dems could have stayed true to their 'principles' (ha ha).

Let's face it, he's sold his party and his voters down the river, for a place in the cabinet where he evidently holds no sway at all.

What a guy

I'm amazed that people switched their vote based on the debates. It's shallow politics!

A minority government would have been a disaster as the Government would have been negiotiating deals on every piece of legislation. This would cause there to be an unstable Government that the markets would hate and we would probably be having another general election happening about now as the minority Conservative Government would have been unable to govern effectively.

Ah so the people vote, but really, it's what the 'market' wants that matters.

Might as well save the faff and ask them to appoint the government they want then

The market wouldn't matter if we didn't have to borrow such colossal sums from the market.

If Labour kept spending under control, and ran surpluses instead of deficits, it could tell the bond markets to piss off.

Instead, they surrendered our sovereignty and mortgaged our grandchildrens' futures by arrogantly assuming there would never be a recession again - that they had abolished boom and bust.

"If they had won enough they could have played Labour and the Tories off against each other. "

That's exactly what the Liberals were doing. And Gordon Brown knew this, which is why he capitulated when he did - because he was buggered if he was going to be used by Clegg to get a better deal with Cameron. Can't say I blame him.

Hmm

Lying duplicitous penis sums it up for me!

Ok so his power is limited; we know that

his voice isn;t though
and defending things he said were plainly wrong is just shitty.

he's lost quite a lot of lifetime voters in my family (South West, lots of (former no doubt) Lib Dems there)

Wanker

I'd be far more likely to vote for an orange with a face drawn on it right now; at least we'd know what we were getting!

CCPCCP- Labour voter until Iraq / Afghanistan debacle in fact

Then I switched but my family lifetime Lib Dems, including DH

I think mosta re planning to vote Labour now.

LD asked me to stand in council elections; kinda wished I said yes in the hope of winning just so I could publicly tell NC where to stick it.