I have just seen the highlights, if you can call them that, of Nick Clegg’s speech at the Liberal Democrat’s party conference. To say that I am incensed doesn’t even begin to cover it!
The sheer arrogance of the man. He has apparently decided that he is the only person who can dictate government policy and that it is the Lib Dem’s who should be the arbiters of what the next government can or can’t do.
It looks to me as if his only policy is to prevent what he believes to be the excesses of the other two parties. I thought that the whole point of an election campaign was to present polices to the electorate and let them decide whether they were acceptable or not. Nick Clegg’s view seems to be that the electorate can choose whatever party and/or policies they like, he will decide, after the people have spoken if they can have them or not.
The other thing that strikes me about what he said in his speech is that the result of his stance will be a government in stasis and stagnation, a leadership unable to lead, an executive deprived of executive decision making powers. He wants to have a lukewarm, insipid parliament and a cabinet of none of the talents. Just look at what Vince Cable has managed NOT to achieve while he has been in the Department of Industry and look at the damage Chris Hulne did in the Department of Energy. Do we want this replicated after the next general election?
Nick Clegg is a man seemingly incapable of keeping his manifesto promises or even his given word in a coalition deal. I don’t think his own party supporters, or the electorate in general will forgive him for reneging on his promise over tuition fees and his deliberate wrecking tactics in respect of boundary changes is looking increasingly like a cynical ploy to foster another hung parliament; a scenario that benefits nobody but himself and his party.
If you want a country that is going nowhere, if you want a government that can’t govern, if you want to watch our international competitors race past us economically then a coalition is the quickest way I can imagine to bring all that about.
Nick Clegg has already admitted that he’ll sell himself (and I suspect sell himself very cheaply indeed) to anyone who will keep his seat in a cabinet chair and his nose in the trough. A paltry number of seats from a rump of a principal-less party should not be a mandate for them to anchor us in a morass of ineffectual government.
It is my hope that the Conservative Party are given a majority at the next election. However, if we don’t get a majority, but are the largest party I hope that David Cameron will have the steel to tell |Mr Clegg to sling his hook back to the back benches and try and go for as long as he can as a minority government. My prediction is that if that happens it won’t be too long before Mr Clegg departs Westminster for the much more lucrative pastures of Brussels.
The sheer arrogance of the man. He has apparently decided that he is the only person who can dictate government policy and that it is the Lib Dem’s who should be the arbiters of what the next government can or can’t do.
It looks to me as if his only policy is to prevent what he believes to be the excesses of the other two parties. I thought that the whole point of an election campaign was to present polices to the electorate and let them decide whether they were acceptable or not. Nick Clegg’s view seems to be that the electorate can choose whatever party and/or policies they like, he will decide, after the people have spoken if they can have them or not.
The other thing that strikes me about what he said in his speech is that the result of his stance will be a government in stasis and stagnation, a leadership unable to lead, an executive deprived of executive decision making powers. He wants to have a lukewarm, insipid parliament and a cabinet of none of the talents. Just look at what Vince Cable has managed NOT to achieve while he has been in the Department of Industry and look at the damage Chris Hulne did in the Department of Energy. Do we want this replicated after the next general election?
Nick Clegg is a man seemingly incapable of keeping his manifesto promises or even his given word in a coalition deal. I don’t think his own party supporters, or the electorate in general will forgive him for reneging on his promise over tuition fees and his deliberate wrecking tactics in respect of boundary changes is looking increasingly like a cynical ploy to foster another hung parliament; a scenario that benefits nobody but himself and his party.
If you want a country that is going nowhere, if you want a government that can’t govern, if you want to watch our international competitors race past us economically then a coalition is the quickest way I can imagine to bring all that about.
Nick Clegg has already admitted that he’ll sell himself (and I suspect sell himself very cheaply indeed) to anyone who will keep his seat in a cabinet chair and his nose in the trough. A paltry number of seats from a rump of a principal-less party should not be a mandate for them to anchor us in a morass of ineffectual government.
It is my hope that the Conservative Party are given a majority at the next election. However, if we don’t get a majority, but are the largest party I hope that David Cameron will have the steel to tell |Mr Clegg to sling his hook back to the back benches and try and go for as long as he can as a minority government. My prediction is that if that happens it won’t be too long before Mr Clegg departs Westminster for the much more lucrative pastures of Brussels.
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