This is politics calling Nick Clegg, is there anyone there?
Dear Nick Clegg,
It was on reading the ComRes poll yesterday that something rather amusing struck me. While Brown has been hailed a global hero (much to my annoyance) and Cameron has been fighting back with attacks on the Prime Minister’s judgement and record, it suddenly occured to me that you are nowhere to be seen. I mean, really nowhere. I haven’t heard a peep from you in quite a while, despite the catastrophic meltdown of the global economy and the two main parties in the UK struggling to gain support, so I set about doing a few searches on the internet to see what you’d been up to.
I started with the BBC. What has Nick Clegg been saying about the credit crunch? Answer: not much.
So I turned to Google instead, and found that on typing ‘Clegg credit crunch’ the top story is about you being so badly affected by the credit crunch that you have been forced to shop at Sainsburys instead of Ocado. On the same page, I also found John Redwood savaging you for thinking that the basic pension was £30 a week, which caused you great embarrassment in the Commons if memory serves me correctly. Having failed with that search, I typed ‘Clegg economy’ into Google instead. This produced a string of references to your ‘The financial crisis could be an economic 9/11′ soundbyte from such media titans as the Yorkshire Post and the Aberconwy Lib Dem website.
What are you playing at, seriously? You can’t just walk away when the going gets tough and expect the voters to welcome you back with open arms once the crisis starts to dwindle (which could be months, if not years, from now). There are around 18 months until the next election and you have gone completely AWOL for weeks and weeks, bar one soundbyte and a couple of ill-informed remarks. I understand that a third party will find it hard to surpass Brown and Cameron in terms of airtime, but when our economy is so desperately in need of an alternative to massive borrowing hikes, surely there is a great opportunity to steal some of Cameron’s thunder and challenge Brown directly?
The Lib Dems are still 6% behind their 2005 general election result and that’s after a year of Labour freefall and recent Conservative difficulties – what does that say about your leadership? And leadership is precisely what your party and this country needs right now. Tempting as it may be to simply sneak away while no-one is looking in the hope of doing some work behind the scenes instead, you cannot expect voters to flick on their support for Lib Dems like a light switch if and when you decide to reappear. Voters don’t like being treated like idiots. As the third party, you can afford to be more radical, more innovative and more aggressive in your policies than the Conservatives, but you seem totally uninterested in putting together such a package and what’s more, you appear uninterested in the financial crisis full-stop.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
I notice that Clegg appears to have left his party’s input on this topic entirely to Vince Cable, thus playing the card of his most popular (especially in the media) frontbencher who also happens to be the spokesman on finance and the economy.
With Labour it’s Brown and some Darling, with the Conservatives it’s Cameron and Osborne, but with the LibDems it’s just Cable…
It’s bizarre, isn’t it. Can you imagine Gordon Brown letting Darling steal the spotlight?!?! Like that would ever happen. Shadow Chancellors should certainly add credibility to the proceedings but Cable has usurped Clegg’s position as the spokesman on the most serious issue facing this country in years.
I wonder if this was a conscious decision by the Lib Dem leadership, given Cable’s past performances at PMQs when he hit Brown hard?
Maybe our Nick is off making sure his own investments are safe…
Or maybe he is still looking for a suitable disguise for him to wear when he shops at Sainsburys. God forbid someone might see him or any other MP shopping in such an awful establishment.
Hmm too posh for Tescos, eh? Oh wait, aren’t ocado part of John Lewis? Did he used to get his food on ‘the List’? The people have a right to know!
I apologise for wandering O/T but have just read that in the latest edition of Total Politics, Sir Alan Beith discusses his memoirs. I am practically inarticulate with rage.
How DARE someone as defiantly devoid of interest as Alan “Little Alan” Beith write his memoirs?
He is so colourless, he is regarded as a non-entity even within his non-event of a party. To paraphrase Michael Heseltine, if he looks like a railway porter, sounds like a railway porter and wags his tail like a railway porter, then he is a railway porter, not an international statesman who hides his light beneath a bushel.
Truly, he could bore the buzzards off a dustcart.
The publishers might as well just have chopped down a couple of trees, sliced them, decanted them into a remainder bin and saved him the bother of putting his mind-curdlingly dreary recollections down on paper. Silly little man.
What an outrage. What are they called, these memoirs, “My Struggle”?
Clear off, Alan Beith, you waste of space.
Urban man, it seems that – just like Nick Clegg – you are struggling to stay on topic.
Shaun, I’m sure almost every single MP has used their allowance to pay for some grub at some point. The House of Lords get a daily allowance just for food which is (a) very generous, and (b) claimed by almost every single one of them.
I know, LFAT, I was just amused the Supermarket he name-checked while moaning about his relative poverty is one linked to the firm where all the MPs used to splurge our money on approved items.
The Lords allowance is a funny thing – it was like a pension for the elderly ‘worthy’ – you turned up to a comfortable environment, got paid for your trouble and ate subsidised food while not actually being obligated to do very much at all, if anything, beyond turn up and get paid.
I hope when I’m old, my care-home is as good as that!
I think you are being a wee bit harsh there Letters…Clegg has been about and there is a substantial amount of media narrative out there in favour of tax cuts. Of course, you would expect me to say that as a Lib Dem but hey-ho….
It’s probably true that Vince Cable is leading the charge….
Poor cleggy…what’s he ever done to you? Actually I’d rather end that sentence after done. I do sometimes find myself in sympathy with Lib Dem policies but I don’t hear about them any more. If the Liberals had a dynamic leader they really could profit from all this mess. Profit really is a dirty word these days!