Nick Clegg, erstwhile star of Cleggmania, has a memoir coming out soon. In it, he makes some fairly big claims about the nature of the Conservative government. They’re not all that surprising, but it is rather weird to hear it said out loud.
I was going to tag this onto the end of my Tories in Trouble thread, but some of this claims are very serious. I thought they might benefit from a fresh start.
Welfare cuts as much about chasing votes as saving money
Branding Osborne’s attitude “very unattractive, very cynical”, Clegg said: “Welfare for Osborne was just a bottomless pit of savings, and it didn’t really matter what the human consequences were, because focus groups had shown that the voters they wanted to appeal to were very anti-welfare, and therefore there was almost no limit to those anti-welfare prejudices.”
Conservatives didn’t build council or social housing because it "** creates Labour voters".**
Clegg said when he broached the subject of spending on social housing with then prime minister David Cameron and Osborne, he was rebuked. “[One of them] I honestly can’t remember whom, looked genuinely nonplussed and said: ‘I don’t understand why you keep going on about the need for more social housing? It just creates Labour voters.”
Pandering to the “cardboard cut-out prejudices in the Tory Party”
The former Liberal Democrat leader accused Theresa May of trying to have misleading numbers inserted into a Home Office study on immigration when she was in charge of the department.
He went on: “She kept saying there was this terrible ‘abuse’ of freedom of movement, when simply describing EU citizens exercising their right to come and work in the UK. They tried to insert statistics suggesting the number of UK citizens living and working in other EU countries was half a million lower than any other mainstream estimate.”
Sadly, none of his revelations surprise me. I just don’t get why the majority of the electorate are so fucking stupid (or should that be selfish?) to put up with our current political landscape.
Shame he couldn’t have come out with at a time when it could have made a difference, namely before the last GE. Can’t say that I’m surprised he’s prioritised his memoirs over being honest and having principles, what with being a politician and all.
Has the twat also come out with a considered statement as to why he decided to form a coalition with the Torys rather than Labour? What did he think was going to happen?
He gave rationale at the time. He felt that he should respect the majority position of the public, who gave the Tories more votes and seats than any other party.
Do you remember what they both said at the time? That they’d govern the national interest?
These things don’t seem like that much when itemised as bullet lists. The impact is close to incalculable. I expect every person on this board is affected by these decisions, most of us negatively. I’ve seen two of those decisions interplay on the Flower Estates, people moaning about immigrants taking the available council stock.
Better late than never, I suppose - and it is good to have what is likely to be a rare insight into the actual motivations of those running the latest Conservative project. As you say, just confirms what we already knew.
I reckon there could well have been uproar. People may not have voted decisvely for change, but they voted for change nonetheless.
It’d be easy to remember the last Labour government with rose-tinted glasses. The best thing you can say about those running that project is that they were nowhere near as bad as these cunts, but still, nowhere near convincing enough on their own terms to articulate a vision that would stop their declining vote share.
While I am sure that with the benefit of hindsight, Darling’s eyebrows, along with the rest of him, would be eagerly invited back into number eleven, but they weren’t well thought of at the time. How much time, for example, could they have spent reforming while the multi-year leadership tussle took place?
I dont know Pap, I obviously cant speak for all Lib Dems but the ones I did know at the time were dumbfounded that Clegg chose the Tories. As a Lib Dem myself I always thought of the party as more left than right. Still. it is done now and the Lib Dems seem to have fallen off the planet.
During that initial general election Clegg suddenly went from Mr Nobody to the bloke with all of the power.
He chose to usher Cameron into place but he knew that with every passing day his party was bleeding credibility through every oirifce and it could only end one way - with a fucking book tour.
From Deputy Prime Minister to a few pages of drivel dumped in a skip at the back of Waterstones - The Decline of Clegg.
Would someone please tell him, to aim it at May. She’s the threat now and therefore more relevant. Thought Nick would have enough intelligence to realise it’ll sell more books.
