That Lasted Long, Then
The calamitously close result of the Lib Dem leadership battle didn’t take long to be raised up as a comment against one of Clegg’s proposals - by a Lib Dem, no less:
Do I have to remind Team Clegg of these results? Clearly I do:
- Nick Clegg: 20,988
- Chris Huhne: 20,477
Nick Clegg had a chance to spell out his vision for public service reform during his leadership election campaign; he bottled it. By all accounts he should have won an easy victory; he failed. If he wants to make the case now, that’s fine, but he doesn’t have a mandate and the price he has to pay for only just failing to pluck disaster from the jaws of victory is that he has to treat the intelligence of the party membership with a modicum of respect. Spinning before making a major policy speech that we aren’t going to like what he’s going to say is pathetic, counter-productive and yaaaawn! so like his predecessors.
If Clegg’s 511 vote majority can already - remember he was only elected less than a month ago! - be able to be described in terms of him not having a mandate, there may well be internal party/activist troubles coming along for Clegg far sooner than anyone could have realised.
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Hope the Norfolk Blogger is not reading this but do the Lib Dems really matter, except at local level?
Yes, they do. We need a third party of some description for the protest votes to go to / in order to act as a counter-balance to the two main parties - which depends on your point of view. The Lib Dems do have a point - even if it isn’t much of one.
He won’t have problems as long as he doesn’t go around picking unnecessary fights. Whatever Campbell’s flaws, he understood (or was made to understand) that if you took the debate to the membership, the membership were broadly happy to make change. We saw that with scrapping the 50p supertax policy, post offices, Trident, etc.
Consider my blog post yesterday as a warning shot to those who think the best way to win the hearts and minds of the public is by publicly beating up the membership.