In his New Year message, Nick Clegg again tried to distinguish the Liberal Democrats from the Tories by presenting himself and his party as the progressive conscience of the coalition. This is the “differentiation strategy”. Clegg claimed that, thanks to the Lib Dems, the Government has been “helping people get through these difficult times with measures to make life fairer and easier”. The truth, of course, is that the Lib Dems have been helping the Tories introduce policies that have made life harder and more unfair. As we kick off 2012, it is looking less and less like a coalition and more like a Conservative administration with the Lib Dems merely keeping the Tories in power.
According to a YouGov poll this month, only 33 per cent of people who voted Lib Dem at the last general election said they would do the same again. Therefore, as a recent leaked internal memo said, Lib Dem ministers are attempting to take more credit for so-called “Lib Dem successes”, as well as trying to define the party through what they are apparently preventing the Tories from doing.
Two years ago, as the party prepared to fight the 2010 general election, Clegg and the Lib Dems were busy preparing a manifesto that warned of the dangers of a “VAT bombshell”, backed Labour’s fiscal plans to halve the deficit by 2014, pledged to scrap university tuition fees and promised to protect frontline NHS services. Yet they are now part of a Government that has increased VAT, cut too deep and too fast (choking off growth and so making the deficit worse), trebled tuition fees and voted through a Health Bill which many believe will lead to the National Health Service being focused more on private profit at the expense of patient care.
When interviewed recently on the BBC’s Today programme, Clegg struggled when asked about the “overall fairness” of Government policies. Lib Dem ministers talk about lifting one million low-paid workers out of paying income tax altogether, but overall tax and benefit changes are, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, “clearly regressive” and unfair. Government policies will reduce the incomes of those in the bottom 30 per cent of earners, increase child poverty by 100,000 by 2013 and cost families with two children an extra £320 a year due to tax credit changes.
The excuse for the Lib Dems is that in coalitions both parties can never fully implement their manifestos – hence the Deputy Prime Minister talks of having to compromise. But this is pretty lame. Trebling tuition fees, or voting through a regressive budget that hits families with children the hardest, is not compromise.
It is just capitulating to what the Tories want.
It has been easy for Clegg to generate media reports about “coalition rifts” and Lib Dem opposition to aspects of Government policy. The press in particular has given the Lib Dems a free pass, accepting the view that Clegg’s party are the legitimate “internal opposition” to the Conservative-led Government.
According to Philip Cowley at Nottingham University, almost every backbench Lib Dem MP has either abstained or voted against the Government. But, time after time, when push comes to shove, the Lib Dems keep supporting David Cameron. Their posturing in the press and their faux opposition should not fool anyone.
Roy Hattersley once said that there were three types of coalitions: ones borne either out of necessity, conviction or convenience. In justifying supporting Conservative policies, Clegg argues that the coalition is one of necessity. But for Clegg, Danny Alexander and the other Orange Book, free-market Liberals, it appears more and more like one of genuine conviction. In a recent Radio 4 documentary, David Laws cheerfully talked about “winning” against the “social liberal” wing of the party and he has said in the past that working with the Tories in government has sped up the “Orangeing” of the Lib Dems.
In fact, Lib Dem MPs might broadly divide into two categories. First, these Orange Book Lib Dems, who might be better described as the “quasi-Conservatives”. They differ only from true Tories in their lack of complete hostility towards Europe (although the irony is now that Cameron has walked away from the European mainstream, Clegg and co are members of not just a Conservative-led Government, but an anti-European one, too).
But if it is a matter of conviction for the ‘quasi-Conservatives’, making sure that the Tory-led Government is kept in power is now entirely a matter of convenience for other Lib Dem MPs.
This second category might be best described as “‘pay-roll survivalists”. The Lib Dem MPs that are making the most of their time in power, enjoying the trappings of office as ministers – the ministerial salary, the chauffeur-driven car, the army of civil servants and lobbyists making them feel important. Or the backbenchers either aspiring to be ministers who simply dare not force a general election for fear of losing their seats in the face of terrible opinion poll ratings.
These “pay-roll survivalists” support the Government in order to keep the letters ‘”MP” after their name, or to have the words “Right Honourable” – or even “Sir” – before their name.
Many people who voted Lib Dem in 2010 voted Labour in the past, but became disillusioned by 2005 and 2010. Labour, with its new direction and leadership, is well placed to provide a home to these voters who now feel let down and betrayed. To these people, Labour should extend the hand of friendship.
But when it comes to Clegg and the Lib Dem leadership, the glove should come off the other hand. We must be brutal and relentless in exposing what Clegg and his party are doing. They cannot be allowed to get away with pretending to be the conscience of a coalition that clearly has no conscience – and when they are neck deep in every bad thing that Cameron’s Government is doing.
