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.

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.

Aim of Protest Lost in Flames

The money quote of the day comes from Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union (UCU) (Evening Standard):

“It speaks volumes about the anger and concern of students and academics in further and higher education at what this government is trying to do.”

Why, you may reasonably ask, is this remark so hilarious? Well, it seems that the protesters out in force today to march against the proposed rise in university tuition fees were so angry that they turned into a maniacal horde intent not on peaceful and lawful demonstration, but on the destruction of what I can only suppose they regard as their sworn enemy, the democratically elected government of the United Kingdom.They are angry and concerned, indeed, and they told the Conservative Party about it by assaulting Conservative Party HQ in Milbank Tower. If all these students take away from their university education is that the correct way of showing your disagreement is to throw a massive anger-tantrum, then I doubt a trebling of tuition fees will bring in enough money to raise the standards of British higher education.

Whatever message the protesters had to send has now been swept away by the flames of phoney outrage. Any protest that turns into a riot should not be acknowledged by amending the plans for fee-rises. If they want to be heard, demonstrators need to police themselves better and weed out the riotous elements early on. Now, sadly but inevitably, the majority of peaceful student protesters have to suffer because of the minority who could not act in a grown-up manner.