Nick Clegg and Election Pledges, Not a Good Match

Nick Clegg's comments on ITV's Daybreak today beg the question: why does this make him, and his fellow Lib-Dem MPs look so untrustworthy and opportunistic? Having signed a pledge, before the general election, committing him and his party to not voting for any rise in higher education tuition fees, he now, as a member of Her Majesty's Coalition Government, makes an about-face and supports the near trebling of fees. His exact comments on Daybreak - as reported by the BBC - were: "I should have been more careful, perhaps, in signing that pledge at the time. At the time I really thought we could do it." He then sets about backtracking from that pledge, signed in the full knowledge of what he was committing himself to politically, by blaming the state of the finances and the compromises he had to make to join the Coalition.

It's understandable that Mr. Clegg now wants to distance himself from his pledge, yet this pledge is not so easibly abandoned. It was a major plank of the Lib-Dem election campaign. Something, they claimed, set them apart from the Conservatives and Labour. This is what he said at the time (and click on the link to see a nice picture of a proud Mr. Clegg with his newly signed pledge):

Labour and the Conservatives have been trying to keep tuition fees out of this election campaign. Despite the huge financial strain fees already place on Britain's young people, it is clear both Labour and the Conservatives want to lift the cap on fees . . .The Liberal Democrats are different. Not only will we oppose any raising of the cap, we will scrap tuition fees for good, including for part-time students . . . Students can make the difference in countless seats in this election. Use your vote to block those unfair tuition fees and get them scrapped once and for all.

Indeed, if you look at the election results, I think you'll find that the Lib-Dems won a great number of seats on the back of the student voters they so actively wooed. If those students now abandon them the Lib-Dems are in danger of being reduced to a rump party at the next election.

On the one hand, yielding to the circumstances of the times is brave and may sometimes even be the wise thing to do. But to make such a big deal of a cast-iron pledge only to then abandon it months later without even the merest semblance of fighting for what you believe, is not brave, nor wise. It smacks of rather dastardly opportunism and makes it seem like Mr. Clegg will say and do anything for swift electoral gain.

A few Lib-Dem MPs are made of sterner stuff and have signalled their continued opposition to tuition fee rises. They have realised that a politician is worth no more than his word of honour and a promise made cannot lightly be broken. Voters will except a change of heart if it is genuinely based on changing facts and circumstances, but they will see through simple political trickery.