Events | 2010.03.13
Nick Clegg interview: 'Brown's in denial – almost delusional'
Lib Dem leader says journalists need to look beyond hung parliament, as it will be clear who voters want
Ask Nick Clegg who he will back in the event of a hung parliament, and he dismisses it. That, he says, is the kind of inside baseball question that political journalists obsess about, but real people don\'t.
Earlier this week, he set out this position to journalists filming an hour-long documentary about Clegg, the real man. But as soon as the cameras stopped rolling, a fellow passenger on the same train piped up unhelpfully: "So, who will you back then?"
Inside and outside Westminster, people are looking to Clegg because, with the opinion polls proving volatile, the Lib Dem leader may have to choose one way or the other. But it\'s a poisoned chalice – if he errs to the right, his left-wing grass roots will punish him, and if he sways left, critics of Gordon Brown within the party will be aghast.
Clegg doesn\'t seem so sure that it will be as close as the polls suggest. "I don\'t believe for a minute that there is going to be a photo finish – it will be quite clear who the voters want. That\'s the mandate. I personally think these constitutional niceties will be swept aside if it\'s obvious that there\'s one party that enjoys a mandate, if not an actual majority, from the British people."
Instead, he hopes so many will vote Lib Dem he won\'t have to chose either way: "If people constantly frighten themselves to thinking that the only possibility is two old answers to every problem – the red team or the blue team – then we won\'t allow politics to change in the way I think people\'s voting behaviour suggests people want it to change: more plural, more diverse, not stuffed in to this old duopoly.
"It\'s not romantic, it is much more heartfelt than that. The British political system and the whole clapped out Westminster architecture, and the language that we use about politics, it\'s completely unsustainable. You either decide to be part of that transition to do something different. Or you cling to old certainties.
"All I\'m saying is that for people who think they are of a progressive turn of mind, the least progressive thing to do is to cling to old certainties."
So for a man who would seek to float butterfly-like above the hoi polloi of politics, there\'s the possibility we may see him in coalition with another of the political leaders about whom he is currently very rude – a recipe for very old fashioned political enmity.
On Brown, he is withering: "It\'s very difficult, to be honest, to invest much hope or faith with a man who couldn\'t even maintain relations with his own colleagues, let alone rebuild trust in the country at large.
"I mean this is a man who seems to repel most people who worked closest with him in his own party. I know Gordon has persuaded himself that this recession has nothing to do with him. It is the biggest sleight of hand in modern British politics. Talk about living in denial. It\'s almost delusional."
Cameron and Osborne are "flakey" – but since being mean clearly isn\'t his natural habitat, and these guys could be his colleagues in two months, shouldn\'t he tone it down? "Am I going to soften my language and views that Gordon Brown is personally responsible for a lot of the economical anxiety and heartache in this country? No."
In this week before the Liberal Democrats\' last party conference before the general election, Clegg has taken part in a slew of media appearances. The exposure allowed for greater scrutiny, which reveals a party desperately trying to chart a course through the middle, to appeal to both Tory and Labour voters.
They have four conditions from which they will not deviate: a pupil premium for poor children; a pledge to raise the personal tax threshold to £10,000; reform of the City; and reform of the political system.
But are they chimeric and difficult to pin down, with different slants put on policies for different political audiences? In an interview with the Spectator Clegg says their tax allowance rise is something Nigel Lawson could be proud of, while in this interview he spent 13 minutes arguing vociferously against research by the Fabian society that shows this policy to be regressive.
Not contradictory, but different in emphasis – in an interview with this newspaper six months ago Clegg said there would be "savage" cuts, today he tells us there will be a new tax on banks.
Even if Clegg\'s ideas are proving changeable, the party faithful will ensure he remains a yellow rather than a scarlet or blue pimpernel – any decision that affects party independence will have to be agreed by three-quarters of their MPs.
Meanwhile, Clegg continues to ask us to lift our eyes above the hanging parliament. "This election is part of a big transition from rigid 20th century duopoly," Clegg says, "to something different. We don\'t know what that is, but it\'s already different, that\'s the point."
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/[...]gg-interview-liberal-democrats
