Nick Clegg is back! Fresh from being sacked as president of global affairs at Meta for being the dictionary definition of “metropolitan liberal elite” when the return of Trump called for a bit more “hipster nationalism”, he is now offering lessons to the Institute for Government about his time in the coalition. Meta’s loss, it seems, is our gain.
Ah, who can forget Cleggmania? “I agree with Nick”, and the awkward moment in the rose garden coalition press conference when a journalist reminded David Cameron about his best political joke? Well actually lots of people don’t remember any of this, as Clegg was keen to point out. Caveating the entire speech he made yesterday by trying to make us realise just how long ago it all was. For example, in 2010, he said, Tik Tok didn’t exist, Margaret Thatcher, Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro were still alive, and Netflix was a company that sent DVDs in the post. I’d add that there are grown adults walking around today who were still in nappies when the Liberal Democrats entered Whitehall and several generations of students who would look at you blankly if you said “Lib Dems” and “tuition fees” in the same sentence, rather than the very mention of those words inspiring them to take to the roof of a nearby building and throw a fire extinguisher off a roof.
I’ve not heard of a single governing party in Britain that has never lost big due to their record
But — he was keen to stress — the point of labouring the passage of time was not to draw attention to how old he was. ( “I’m actually not that old!” he told his IFG interviewer, perhaps making sure he wasn’t ruling himself out of a return to politics). He was stressing his lessons on coalition government were not completely transferable to what he imagined was about to happen to Westminster at the next general election. A six-party situation which was, whilst using First Past the Post, bound to “deliver ever more bizarre and irrational results”. (Yes, he’s still bitter about the result of the 2011 AV referendum nobody ever remembers).
But Clegg also exhorted his party to go into coalition again. A lesson too far for his Lib Dem colleagues perhaps. Before they entered coalition his party had 62 MPs, but in 2015 after a single term in office they were left with eight. He thinks this was a price worth paying though: “Politics without power is like a car without fuel”. How can this be controversial? Imagine the Lib Dems had rejected the offer to enter Government in 2010 and instead chosen to enter a confidence and supply agreement. They would have saved the 2015 bloodbath but would they really be doing better now than the 72 seats they currently hold?
Plenty think it’s madness to contemplate another tilt at the top though. For example John Rentoul in the Independent thinks the Lib Dem lesson that coalitions are always bad should hold:
Clegg presented himself as a person of destiny, serving the country not the party…even if it resulted in the destruction of his party at the 2015 election
Sounds pretty noble to me. I’ve not heard of a single governing party in Britain that has never lost big due to their record in office. And which party leader doesn’t have a touch of destiny? Conventional wisdom in 2015 was that the Tories had triumphed by using the hapless Lib Dems as a human shield for their unpopular decisions. But that assessment now looks as dated as a postal DVD service. Out of the Conservatives and the Lib Dems now, which one would you bet on entering office any time soon?
Avoiding difficult decisions should not be seen as a morally superior position to carping from the sidelines. That’s surely what journalism is for. Nick Clegg and his party were responsible for some dreadful policies, but entering government is surely not one of them.
