Nick Clegg makes no apologies for coalition deal

Published on Sunday 19 September 2010 18:58

NICK Clegg will today take on the critics in his party, with members openly expressing their concern that he and other MPs have sold out to the Tories.

• Hand of friendship: Nick Clegg greets Charles Kennedy when the current and former Lib Dem party leaders appeared together on The Andrew Marr Show on BBC TV yesterday. Picture: Getty Images

In his keynote speech, Mr Clegg will tell delegates that staying on the sidelines was not an option for the party last May, when it held the balance of power.

His words are intended to mollify members who have not hidden their nervousness about being involved in a government with their political enemies, the Conservatives, and in the biggest programme of cuts in modern history.

But Mr Clegg will question whether some members would rather have stayed on the fringes in opposition.

"Some say we shouldn't have gone into government at a time when spending had to be cut," he is due to say.

"We should have let the Conservatives take the blame. Waited on the sidelines, ready to reap the political rewards. Maybe that's what people expected from a party that has been in opposition for 65 years."

He will add: "People have got used to us being outsiders, against every government that's come along. Maybe we got used to it ourselves. But the door to the change we want was opened, for the first time in most of our lifetimes. Imagine if we had turned away. How could we ever again have asked the voters to take us seriously?"

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The speech follows a testing question-and-answer session yesterday, when members bluntly put their worries to him.

Prominent party activist and youth campaigner Linda Jack said she supported Mr Clegg's leadership bid because she could trust him with her life, and that meant she could trust him with the party.

She went on: "I can still trust you with my life, but can I trust you with my party?"

Another, Christine Brett, expressed the impatience members had with progress on ending the detention of the children of asylum-seekers.

"When is it going to happen? Today, tomorrow, next month, next year?" she demanded.Mr Clegg said it had almost completely ended, apart from one small group just before deportation.

Jules Hope asked: "Why are the Lib Dems being blamed for the Tory cuts and the Conservatives being praised for policies we have brought to the coalition?"

Mr Clegg, insisted it was still "early days" and asked for time for the coalition to work.

Delegate Simon Dodd received loud applause when he raised questions over whether the party could maintain its independent image in the coalition.

But Mr Clegg received the loudest applause when he confirmed that the Lib Dems would stand in every seat in the 2015 election, ruling out any further electoral deal with the Tories.

But he told members that it was important that they embraced the coalition and its cuts.

He said the party had to realise that it was a five-year project to show the British people that coalition government works and that they could "trust a new type of politics".

He said: "I could create synthetic arguments with the Conservatives. That might give you a good feeling in the short term, but it would do something much worse in the long term.

"We are trying to create a new politics and show the country that doing politics differently works."

He said it would have been "untenable" to go into power with Labour, because it lost the election, and claimed the party which was in government until May was being dishonest about the cuts and state of the economy.

He added: "When people ask me why I have not crossed every 't' and dotted every 'i' in the coalition agreement, that is because we did not win the election."

However, he received support from the floor from the former Met policeman and London Mayor candidate Brian Paddick, who pointed out that Mr Clegg had always said he would choose the party with the most votes and seats to go into power with. Mr Paddick said it made the claims that he had "betrayed the party" look ridiculous.

Mr Clegg insisted the only people who claimed he had betrayed the Lib Dems was Labour and its supporters.

Mr Clegg also defended his comments in an interview in a Sunday paper that the party had to stop thinking of itself as merely an alternative to Labour on the Left.

He pointed to its separate tradition, adding: "We are better than that.Better than being an alternative for somebody who does not want to vote Labour for one reason or another."

But he reassured delegates that he and his colleagues do "not relish cuts", but said that there was "nothing progressive" about basing public spending on borrowing too much. He described it as being like "building public services on sand".

And he insisted that being involved allowed the party to put a Liberal mark on the cuts and stop them from being as harsh on the less-well-off as they might have been without them in government.

The tough questioning came as the party leadership appeared to be apologetic for going into the coalition.

Mr Clegg's right-hand man, Danny Alexander, who led the negotiations on the deal, said in his speech that it was in the Liberal tradition of doing the "difficult thing because it was the right thing to do".

The downbeat mood was captured by Scottish leader Tavish Scott, who noted that once, when he was a minister in the Scottish Government, delegates would have "gone bananas" when he told them this at a conference.

Meanwhile, Foreign Office minister Jeremy Browne vowed that the Liberal Democrats would no longer be "marginalised, patronised, ignored" on overseas policy.

Mr Browne said the party had often provided a "voice of wisdom and sound judgment", particularly on the Iraq war.

"But we were also always a voice in opposition: marginalised, patronised, ignored," he told the conference.

"The real difficulty for us was being powerless in opposition to prevent their misjudgments from becoming reality."

Mr Browne said the party now had the "opportunity to influence and shape the great foreign policy challenges facing Britain and the world".