To think Nick Clegg would of made a great PM

[brexitstolemyfuture]

He's speaking such common sense on brexit and how much of a mess it will be and most people who voted to exit have no clue. It's such a shame his career is over :(

[armpitz]

Somehow, RD's Scottish accent made that funnier (love the Scottish accent by the way!)

NC - amongst the cries of 'Tory scum!' it seems to be forgotten that David Cameron and George Osborne wanted in as well. I think where the EU is concerned there were crackpots on both sides so personally I made my mind up based on what I thought and not on personality politics.

I do think people like Clegg, Sturgeon, even Farage, are the hero of the hour until they actually have to cook the promised menu. That's largely what happened with tuition fees. Clegg - 'if LibDems are elected, I will scrap tuition fees'. LibDems are elected, conceded after a fashion and discover it's a no can do.

I think he is a genuine and kind man but I think Frank Field is as well who campaigned for Leave. No matter how much both sides claim it to be the case, neither view has a moral standpoint.

[ExplodedCloud]

Do you think though that if we'd had an unfettered Tory govt in 2010 with an opposition including the Lib Dems, that we'd have had the Referendum?
I wonder if Cameron and Osbourne would have been seen for what they were earlier? Would the Lib Dems have picked up enough votes in 2015 to stop It I'm conjunction with the other parties?
I wonder if Cameron would have taken that gamble if he hadn't expected to be back in coalition and having someone to blame for dropping the Referendum.

[armpitz]

I don't know if it's quite as straightforward as that, although I have idly wondered at times why Cameron asked a question he didn't really want the answer to.

I suspect it was a way of picking up UKIP votes. Labour had lost much support in 2015 but it was unclear how many had gravitated to UKIP rather than the conservatives. Many people were predicting a UKIP/conservative hung parliament.

Plus, I don't think many of us expected the Leave vote to win. After all, Scotland had been close but ultimately opted for the status quo and I certainly anticipated this to be the case. I think most people did.

So had remain won, DC would have spent another four years in power with the secure knowledge that the public had been given the right to give their views. It just so happened the public didn't agree with DCs views.

[whosahappyharry]

I would take a lifetime of the Cameron/Clegg coalition than another day under May's government.

Same goes for Miliband - miles better than Corbyn.

[Splinters6]

I've been thinking about this some more. What I'd really like to see is the emergence of a new centrist party. I've read NC's account of his time in power and I found it quite genuine where he admits his naivety and how this led to mistakes. I think the irony is that he's almost certainly a better, more canny politician now. I also think his compassion is genuine.

However, unfortunately I think he's the very sort of man, with the very sort of wife that is so utterly loathed by both the right wing press and huge swathes of the public.

[ChangeAComin]

I wish people would stop vilifying NC for the university fees. Man had no choice! Torres were never gonna let it pass.

I agree he's a great politician and would've been a good pm.

[DrAbbyYates]

armpitz and exploded - DC called the referendum to placate the eurosceptic members of his own party who would have otherwise staged a leadership challenge and got rid of him (as they did with John Major). DC was not popular with the conservative (small c) factions of the Tory party who, believe it or not, considered him too liberal.

So we got a referendum at the behest of a fringe group of MPs. It was meant to shore up support for DC as nobody really entertained for a moment the idea the Leave would win.

[ExplodedCloud]

Yes he did want to scupper the UKIP vote but he was starting from a very different place to where he would have been had we not had the coalition. If the Lib Dems had been fighting alongside Labour against a Tory govt I think the serious threat would have been a LibLab coalition in 2015 and not UKIP. NC would have had more appeal than Ed Milliband for the telly and Vince Cable could have taken Osborne to pieces.

[OhtoblazeswithElvira]

Didn't Nick Clegg use to negotiate international treaties? Happy to be corrected by more knowledgeable posters.

[armpitz]

Oh, I can well believe it.

[Lionking1981]

No, I don't think he would make a great pm. I did like him once but not definitely not anymore. The man wants to overturn democracy. Surely, regardless of how you view the EU vote, this is dangerous territory.

George Galloway posted a link earlier of Clegg and the lib dems years ago actually calling for an EU referendum, saying it had been 30 years and the British public had the right to decide now. It turned out he didn't like the result.

My dh voted voted for the lib dems the year of the coalition. He voted for them instead of Labour, never expecting he would help the Tories into power. He will never vote for them again.

[BonnieF]

Clegg was responsible for the large increases in personal tax allowances under the coalition government. That was a Lib Dem policy, whic the Tories have taken up and continued.

[AlecTrevelyan006]

It's incredible that some people still believe that a LibDem / Lab coalition was possible in 2010 - it absolutely wasn't.

Clegg made the best possible decision for the country at the expense, as it turned out, of his party. History will judge him much more kindly than the electorate did in 2015.

I know for a 100% fact that the Tories were not expecting to win in 2015 - and many of them actually didn't want to and were more than happy for the coalition to continue. Many of the policies in the Tory manifesto were only put in there so that they could be dropped after the election as a pre-planned compromise to the Lib Dems. Too many voters had a hissy fit and now we've been left with a Tory govt that will almost certainly win again in 2020 and govern over a United Kingdom that has been torn apart internally and cut adrift from its European neighbours.

Brilliant.

[GraceGrape]

Elvira Clegg worked for Leon Brittan when he was EU trade commissioner. He is therefore one of our very few experts on trade negotiation!

[Carolinesbeanies]

Nope, hes shockingly weak. Weve had a skin full of weak PMs over the last 20 years, who never had to actually do anything in power because a/ it was decided by the eu or b/ it was decided by the US. Any domestic meddling was simply vote catching.

Its a whole new world now, great statesmen are long gone, but they will return because the role now demands it. NC never was, is or will be a great statesman, hes from the populist pleaser school of politics, just as Cameron and Blair were.

[Frazzled2207]

I think he's a good guy who talks sense. Sadly though he's not a strong enough leader to be an effective PM and too wet.
Not a TM fan at all but she's a good leader, which is what a governing party needs to get things done.
Very sad that LDs got such a mauling at the last election and that Labour are in such a state. Together they really could have steered us out of this Brexit nonsense.

[TheNaze73]

Comic relief was last Friday.

[TheoriginalLEM]

He knows what people want to hear and can say it because he'll never have to follow through. I voted for him

[QuentinSummers]

Yes I agree OP and I wish he was still leader of the LDs
The coalition govt was so much better than the Tory govt. We got the raise in basic tax level which was properly progressive and was a LD policy, no matter how much the Tories pretend it was them. The LDs put a brake on a lot of Tory shit.
There is no way there would have been an EU referendum with the coalition govt.
Look what's happened 2 years on from the end of the coalition - the Tories have broken Britain Yet people still can't forgive Nick Clegg over tuition fees.

[Notthemessiah]

So a good leader is one who ploughs their own course, doesn't pay attention to diverging opinions and is convinced they are never wrong but gets stuff done (but naturally only the stuff they want done).

Sounds very similar to the accepted view of how Russians vote and look how well that has done for them over the last 80-90 years.

[Electrolens]

Yabu. He destroyed his party as party leader...that doesn't bode well for leading the country!

[SomewhatIdiosyncratic]

As an aside, how many Labour voters have forgiven Labour from introducing tuition fees in the first place?

I was first eligible to vote as a student who in order to re-enrole for the second year of my course had to write a cheque destined to bounce if my LEA didn't pull their finger out about paying for my fees. Fortunately they finally paid up in time before payment of the cheque went through. I vowed that I'd never vote Labour because of tuition fees... times change (although Labour still haven't given me a reason to consider throwing a vote their way either at a national or local level.)

[MaximaDeWit]

YANBU. All these people saying he sold out and reneged on his promises - he didn't win the election! DC was PM. He was in a position to enact damage limitation as Deputy PM and that's exactly what he did!

[justnowords]

David Cameron wasnt PM neither. Not until NC formed a coalition with him. The Torys could not have passed anything without support from the Lib Dems. The fact is Lib Dems backed the wrong horse and have paid a heavy heavy price for it.

[GallinaGuapa]

I agree OP.