I went into this with a mixture of feelings about Nick Clegg. I voted for the first time in 2010, and it was for the Liberal Democrats. I was intensely politically ignorant, not understanding or knowing much about our political system or the different parties, and barely following the news, but I had absorbed some of the 'Cleggmania' in the air. Later, I absorbed the feelings of betrayal that surrounded the Coalition and the tuition fees debacle, and all the negative feelings towards Clegg among students (I was a student at this time).
Later still, I developed a mental image of Clegg as someone naïve and completely out of his depth in government and media management - this mental image of Clegg was a sympathetic one, and was born out of a belief that the intense hatred directed at him following the tuition fees debacle was probably excessive. I also have a strong impulse to want to believe the best in people, that people make mistakes but are generally trying to do good - this makes me want to avoid villainous caricatures and try to understand people as flawed humans where possible, although I appreciate some people are just dickheads.
I came out of Clegg's book with a far more negative view of him; the book constantly frustrated me. The leftist meme 'Liberalism: The Highest Stage of Cringe' came to mind a lot. Clegg comes across as overconfident, smug, and dismissive towards people who don't share his views. He characterises non-liberals as over-emotional, irrational, illogical, unrealistic, extreme, in contrast to the Liberal Democrats' rational, moderate, logical, realistic politics. He derides 'populism' on the left and right, but also admits to having used populist strategies in 2010, which led to Cleggmania. However, he thinks it was fine for him to do this because he's a reasonable, rational, logical Lib Dem, in contrast to today's over-emotional and irrational populists, and besides, it wasn't his fault if the voters had irrational and unrealistic beliefs which they projected onto him, was it?
'I felt at the time that I was becoming a screen onto which people were projecting their hopes and aspirations, some of which were not realistic. A gap opened up between who I was and what my supporters imagined me to be.'
The words 'rational', 'reasonable', 'realistic', 'logical' and similar cropped up so frequently when describing the Lib Dem position that it became a running joke in my head, and I was tempted to go through the book highlighting them all. Clegg comes across as one of those people who thinks everyone else is irrational and illogical but him; he fails to understand how his values and biases alter his perception of what is logical, realistic, rational. In another life, Clegg might have been a Shapiro-esque character telling voters that facts don't care about their feelings - hell, there's even a subcategory of racists who call themselves 'race realists', and argue that their racism is grounded in logic, reason, realism, rationality. Simply describing your political views as logical, realistic, rational, and reasonable, does not mean they will seem that way to someone else.
The idea of the Lib Dems as the party of reasonable, rational, logical policies - in contrast to over-emotional populists and the two major parties - goes completely out of the window when we get to his explanation for the tuition fees debacle. It turns out that many of the Lib Dem higher ups had serious misgivings about the policy of reducing or scrapping tuition fees - Clegg thought it was unrealistic; Vince Cable thought it was 'fiscally incredible' and 'financially unsustainable'. However, they were unable to convince the (presumably over-emotional, irrational, illogical) wider party, so it was put in the manifesto and was part of their campaigning.
Students were a demographic where the Lib Dems were especially popular; Lib Dem MPs signed a pledge promising to vote against tuition fee increases, and Clegg made online videos advocating a policy he thought was absurd, irrational, illogical, unrealistic. Almost like he was a populist anti-establishment politician using unrealistic policies to win votes.
According to other accounts of the coalition, Clegg was warned (by George Osbourne no less) that supporting increasing fees would be political suicide for the Lib Dems, and he was given the option to abstain on the vote. In this book, Clegg does not mention that he was given this advice or option; he simply insists that raising the fees was the rational, realistic, logical thing to do.
You can certainly make the argument, as Clegg does, that raising both the fees and the earning threshold did improve universities, increase student numbers, and was effectively a graduate tax for higher earners - but the optics of Clegg's tuition fees decision was terrible: Nick Clegg, the Betrayer, leader of the spineless, treacherous Lib Dems, who would dispense with their principles for a taste of power. One of Clegg's 2010 party political broadcasts had him saying NO MORE BROKEN PROMISES - the Lib Dems are still thought of by many as the Party of Broken Promises.
The Conservatives took most of the credit for the Lib Dems policies that were implemented and were popular - such as raising the Income Tax Personal Allowance, which was featured heavily in the Conservative 2015 campaign. I had a personal encounter with a Tory using it as an argument in their favour.
Clegg was utterly naive about media management, publicity, propaganda - he assumed truthful information about the work he was doing would flow naturally out of government and inform people about everything the Lib Dems were up to. Instead, hardly anyone knew what they were doing, which made them look pointless. I could not believe that Clegg - by this time he was in his 40s, had been an MP for five years and leader of his party for three - could be that monstrously ignorant both of the importance of the media in creating political narratives and of the biases of the British media.
Clegg's explanation of his reasons for going into Coalition are convincing; there was no good outcome, and arguably coalition may have been the best outcome of a bad bunch, especially if the Lib Dems managed to implement some of their policies. Although, I can't help but wonder which of Clegg's choices, if made differently, led to a far better alternative present - which of his decisions damned us to the darkest timeline? That'd be a fun episode of Marvel's 'What If...?'
They made holding a referendum on electoral reform a core point of the Coalition Agreement, because such reforms could benefit the party in future. However, he did not think too much about the optics of the anti-establishment party appearing so enthusiastic about teaming up with the party most associated with the establishment - to him, the coalition was the reasonable, rational, logical thing to do.
'But what seemed logical to me appeared deeply unsettling to many people who had voted for the Liberal Democrats...'
A chapter is devoted to the difficulties faced by the Lib Dems trying to implement electoral and House of Lords reform. Clegg imagines himself continuing the reformist Liberal tradition, from Earl Grey's Great Reform Act to Lloyd George's post-WW1 expansion of the electorate; however, he fails to reflect on the circumstances that surrounded those earlier reforms. Those reforms were implemented due to huge public pressure, protest, and fear of outright revolution.
The initial blocking of Earl Grey's Reform Act by the House of Lords led to riots across the country (Nottingham Castle was burnt down in the Reform Riots - it was owned by a Tory who was very vocal in his opposition to reform); the suffragists and suffragettes had long campaigns, and in the aftermath of both WW1 and the Russian Revolution, political reform was a way to calm an angry populace who had come home from war only to live in slums and have no say over their government. The MPs advocating those earlier reforms could get the doubters on side by arguing that the alternative might be full blown revolution.
During the electoral reform referendum, both the Conservatives and Labour supported the No campaign, and the by-then deeply unpopular Lib Dems were the face of Yes. There was no wider public pressure for reform. The No campaign used Clegg's unpopularity in their campaign, and 'the dream of electoral reform was crushed.'
Clegg's failure to reflect on the circumstances around earlier reforms makes his obvious conclusion sound ignorant:
'The fact that the British political system appears to be so immune to change - and so in hock to the vested interest of the two larger parties - will only strengthen the hand of populists who argue that real change requires more extreme action. The more the vested interests in Westminster set their face against overdue reform, the more ferocious the reaction to mainstream politics will become.'
No shit, Nick, but having the threat of such extreme action happening is probably the only way to get enough MPs to pay attention. It was what led to the earlier reforms, after all - not a mild-mannered and unpopular politician politely asking his colleagues to do the logical, reasonable, rational thing, but a warning that if the people's demands weren't met, the alternative to reform would be much worse. I'd prefer this not to be the case, but history, and Clegg's own tale, argue otherwise.
Other accounts of the coalition describe the Tories being shocked at the naivety of the Lib Dems: how willing they were to go into coalition, how much they were willing to compromise to get a few of their policies implemented, and how little they seemed to think about the electoral costs of coalition. After the signing of the Coalition Agreement, William Hague went home and said to his wife, "Well, we have formed a government, but we might well have destroyed the Liberal Party."
A chapter is devoted to the history of coalition governments in various countries; Clegg lists example after example of coalition governments ending disastrously for the minor party. Sometimes the minor party rebounds in popularity, gets into coalition again, and then once again it is punished at the next election. The few examples he lists of minor parties being rewarded electorally for going into coalition are when both parties are on the left. This is exactly the stuff that the Tories are elsewhere described as having been shocked that the Lib Dems didn't know about when agreeing to coalition - since their main goal in government was to reform the voting system in such a way that would make coalitions more likely, it was bizarre that they didn't know much about how coalitioning parties faired elsewhere.
Another chapter is devoted to the relationship of the Lib Dems with the two main parties. This involves Clegg reflecting on how his politics was shaped by the his early years as an MP, and how this contrasted with other, older Lib Dem MPs, who hated going into coalition with the Tories. The Lib Dems of Clegg's age built up relationships with the Tories during their time opposing New Labour together, in defence of civil liberties against War On Terror legislation - this was 'one of the early bonds that kept the later coalition together'. Older Lib Dems - who were there for the SDP breaking away from Labour, and then merging with the Liberal Party to form the Liberal Democrats - retain a fondness for Labour, hoping for an anti-Conservative alliance with them, and perhaps eventual coalescence if the differences can be overcome. This was an interesting exploration of how political views and biases are shaped by differing life experiences.
In 2015, the main selling point of the Lib Dems was that they would prevent either of the two major parties from being too extreme in their opposite directions. In 2010, their campaign had argued that Labour and the Conservatives were too similar to each other and it was time for change; in 5 years, the Lib Dems had gone from the party demanding change to the party that was scared of the other parties changing things too much, a support-destroying strategy if ever there was one. Clegg's political career is over, and the Lib Dems have, as yet, failed to bounce back. Indeed, 'Lib Dem Fightback' became a meme, and I don't even know off the top of my head who their leader is these days (I just Googled it: Ed Davey, apparently).
Last year, I read books by Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, and Alistair Darling, and I came out of them with a grudging respect for, and a greater appreciation of, them as flawed individuals, limited in their knowledge and experiences, doing their best based on the values they believed in - despite my disagreements with, and reservations about, each of them. Nick Clegg's book, however, pleasantly written and largely enjoyable as it is, has surprised me by making me feel far more negatively towards him than I did before.
The next political book I'll write about here will be by a very different figure to Clegg - not someone 'Between the Extremes', but someone very firmly ON an extreme. Tune in next time!
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