Nick Clegg and Election Pledges II: No Honour, Only Deception

Just a couple of days ago I wrote a post about the unprincipled deception Nick Clegg seems to be practicing in his abandoning of the pre-election tuition fee pledge. Now it appears that the truth is even worse than I then suspected. Just as a reminder, this is what Mr. Clegg said but days ago about his pledge not to support any rise in fees: "I should have been more careful, perhaps, in signing that pledge at the time. At the time I really thought we could do it." Bad enough as it goes, but not uncommon fare for political backtracking.

Today, however, the Guardian reports the following:

A month before Clegg pledged in April to scrap the "dead weight of debt", a secret team of key Lib Dems made clear that, in the event of a hung parliament, the party would not waste political capital defending its manifesto pledge to abolish university tuition fees within six years. In a document marked "confidential" and dated 16 March, the head of the secret pre-election coalition negotiating team, Danny Alexander, wrote: "On tuition fees we should seek agreement on part-time students and leave the rest. We will have clear yellow water with the other [parties] on raising the tuition fee cap, so let us not cause ourselves more headaches."

So even before Mr. Clegg had signed his pledge and promised the full National Union of Students (NUS) congress he would not countenance burdening students with pound upon pound of debt, he already knew that his words weren't worth the air they moved or the paper they were printed on.

Has this man no honour? Doesn't giving his word mean anything to him? Apparently not. One of the comments underneath the Guardian article says about Mr. Clegg: "Surely one of the most hated people in Britain right now. His political career is over. Shame he's going to take the lib dems down with him." Let's hope his career is indeed over.

But what about the rest of the Lib-Dems? I used to think most of them were good MPs, standing up for what they believed in. And Mr. Clegg may be an abbarition, but if they don't rid themselves of this baselessly specious leader immediately they do not deserve a continued survival in Westminster. Any Lib-Dem MP who still supports Mr. Clegg should rightfully be a marked man at the next election. Nothing but their dismissal will do as retribution for their deceit.