Puja wrote:Clegg got properly fucked by more experienced politicians. I don't blame him for compromising and working with the Conservatives; I blame him for compromising on a major piece of their policy that was a major driver of their vote and doing something which he'd specifically and categorically stated that he would not do pre-election. I also blame him for failing entirely to get his 30 pieces of silver's worth by allowing the AV referendum to be arranged immediately after him voting for tuition fees and allowing his coalition partners to turn it into a popularity vote on Clegg. I also blame him for losing control of the coalition and allowing the Conservatives to renege on supporting the reform of the House of Lords.Sandydragon wrote:Clegg discovered that grown up politics meant compromises and took the only option open to him (aside from a a supply relationship with the Tories). Many of their supporters didn’t understand that and were used to the purity of opposition and couldn’t handle government.Son of Mathonwy wrote: They occasionally find it. During the 00s the joint desire of the two main parties to start an illegal war pushed them to a position of relevance and only FPTP prevented them from holding a significant chunk of parliament. Clegg destroyed all that.
Supporting the Conservatives would've been forgiveable if they'd accomplished something. As it was, they enabled austerity and increased tuition fees, with the only part of their manifesto coming through being the raised basic tax threshold, which the Conservatives promptly adopted as their policy and their success.
Puja
Worth noting Clegg and other party leaders around at the time didn't want the tuition fees policy, it was a conference idea that Clegg and others never worked out how to pay for. As with many Lib Dem ideas the idea is you never have to worry how to make them reality, faced with having to account for it they were in my estimation only too happy to drop something they never wanted. I do have a solution to the problem of funding universities, bin off a huge number of universities, something like 50% now attend them which means by definition some bang average students are going, which beyond being expensive is wasteful. As ever I'd struggle to get a loyal dog to vote for me with such popular thinking. Likewise my idea to (sort of) bin GPs has never really found an audience
Not sure what he was supposed to do as Lib Dem leader to stop Conservative and Labour MPs voting against the Lords reform. It'd be far more reasonable to blame Clegg for the failure to reform the Commons, the number of MPs and the numbers in each constituency, that's something which should have happened but the Lib Dems pulled the rug from under because they were pissed off about the AV bollocks