Clegg has demonstrated a level of duplicity in his conduct of politics that richly merits the tortures that are about to be carried out upon him. In the last Parliament he ditched a Lib Dem commitment to a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in favour of proposing a referendum on EU membership itself. Now that he is in a position of influence he has abandoned this policy too, showing it was only ever a flag of convenience to fool Eurosceptic voters into believing he took their concerns seriously. His contribution to BBC political editor Nick Robinson’s documentary Five Days That Changed Britain was also telling. First of all he appeared to admit gilding the lily about what Labour had offered him during coalition talks in order to bounce the Tories into offering more. Then, more damaging still, he claimed to have changed his mind about the need for immediate spending cuts well before the election, before being reminded by Robinson that he had spent most of the campaign promising voters that he would thwart Tory plans for swift expenditure reductions. For once he was lost for words. That episode showed him at his very worst – a man who would stand on his head if he thought it would increase his chances of personal advance. Source.
Clegg is the made-to-measure perfect leader for the Love The One You're With party whose HQ routinely orders its grass roots to campaign on diametrically opposing policies in adjoining constituencies if necessary, in order to win votes.
Anyone keeping count of the number of About Turn! orders issued by Cowley Street since the election? No wonder one poll has the LibDems down to 8 per cent. The electorate sees right through them. All Cleggover's hilarious posturing is bootless. With every day that passes, his party is more despised.
The electorate recognises that Clegg is DPM by reason of electoral arithmetic, nothing more. It's fine - it got Labour out and it's keeping them out, which is what the public wants. The public also wants the most popular Conservative Chancellor (up yours, Gordon) ever to have the time and space to do what the public wants him to do: cut the cost of the state, direct essential aid to those who need it and not those who merely want it. It's what we Tories call 'building a fairer society': prenting theft from honest workers by the feckless and the creation of wealth by, erm, wealth-creators, for the benefit of the greatest number and especially of those most in real need. A fairer, Conservative society will also get left-wing apparatchiks and their fellow-travellers off our children's backs and re-introduce what will be a novel concept to the malign socialist manipulators of the 'education' establishment: education.
As for 'I agree with Nick', well, come the next election campaign, we'll all be able to say that in ironic chorus because good old Nick will be saying whatever he thinks we want to hear. He'll have had a taste of what he thinks of as power and being a true LibDem he'll say anything to keep it. But it won't do him any good.
All credit for the achievements of the coalition will accrue to the Conservatives. All the Liberal Democrats will get, with one or two honourable exceptions who are not on Simon Hughes's Christmas card list, is abuse, for being transparently venal lying turncoats.
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