Clegg is finished

The Labour Movement column

By Anthony Painter

Nick Clegg is finished. Once you have stared down the eye of camera on the other end of which is 9 million people who buy your message that you are a different type of politician and you end up as the same as all the rest you are done. A poll at the weekend showed that 61% don’t trust the guy. It’s over.

Many commentators have tried to suggest that his greatest mistake was signing the tuition fees pledge before the election. They are right in the sense that this is a short term demonstration of Nick Clegg’s lack of trustworthiness. But it’s deeper than that. Not only has he not practised a ‘new politics’, he is the worst example of the old politics imaginable: a guy who claims is above the fray, when he’s not only right in the middle of it but a primary instigator.

Leadership is defined at key moments. It doesn’t come by robotically repeating ‘progressive’, ‘fairness’, ‘no choice’, ‘the right thing’, whenever you are under pressure. His mistake was not doing a deal with the Tories – whatever people say the arithmetic was not there for a deal with Labour. His mistake was going into coalition on these terms.

He got a monumentally bad deal (don’t even start on what a bad policy the pupil premium is in the context of a spending freeze in cash terms per pupil.) If this is all that he was able to secure then he should have walked and forced the Tories to govern as a minority. There was a choice; there were many choices. He quite liked the idea of being Deputy Prime Minister and being seen to be the big man. It didn’t work out.

The question for the Liberal Democrats now is whether they go down with their leader. The longer they wait, the more their situation will be irreversible. The simple fact is that if they weren’t in the coalition then a spending review that brutal would never have been agreed and tuition fees would never have been trebled. They need to free themselves from this political Stockholm syndrome. They should not worry about the fate of their leader. He’ll be the UK’s next European Commissioner. He might be quite good at that – there’s no voters you have to be honest with.

What does the end of Nick Clegg mean for Labour? Labour should firstly draw its fire away from the Liberal Democrats (other than locally) – there’s no point as they are currently drifting into the abyss. Instead they must focus on the Tories – they have not sustained a single scratch in the last few months. 64% disapprove of the increase in tuition fees. Just wait until the impact of the rest of the unnecessary £40billion extra of cuts is more profoundly understood (though as I’ve argued previously Labour would and should have committed to a faster fiscal consolidation but significantly less than £115billion.) The excessive focus on the Liberal Democrats is allowing the Tories off scot-free.

How about a new year’s resolution for Labour that disciplines itself to focus on the Tories alone and to strategically laser in on David Cameron, George Osborne, Eric Pickles, Andrew Lansley, and Michael Gove? There are so many deeply damaging policies – the spending review, brutal cuts to local government services, health reform chaos, and schools underinvestment – that are down to the Fatuous Five. It’s about time they were branded with them.

Which leaves Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The sensible thing for Labour to do now is build links and affinities where they can. Richard Grayson of the Social Liberal Forum suggests such an approach. That would seem eminently sensible. Ultimately, the liberal outlook is distinct from Labour (though Labour absolutely does have radical liberalism in its blood.) There will be a great deal of common ground on an agenda of democratic reform, green investment, investment in education and skills, internationalism and international development and interventions in welfare that develop the capabilities of all to name just a few.

The one unanswered question then concerns Labour’s yes to AV campaign and the Liberal Democrats. Should Ed Miliband share a platform and campaign with Nick Clegg during the referendum? If he wants to see a positive result in May then the answer to the dilemma is quite simple. Under no circumstances should he be seen publicly with Nick Clegg in support of the campaign. In fact, if Liberal Democrat strategists want to see a positive outcome then they would be best advised to put their leader in a cupboard until the campaign is over. If they fail to lock him in that cupboard then he should be avoided as he is glowing with political toxicity.

So that’s Labour’s strategy with regard to the other parties for 2011: focus on ensuring the Tories get to own their foolhardy agenda and leave the Liberal Democrats to sort out their leader but build alliances where possible. Meanwhile, Ed Miliband still has a considerable distance to travel on defining himself, defining the future, rebuilding the party as a community organisation, and creating the sort of policies show Labour is once again a party fizzing with ideas of how to make Britain a country in which each individual has a real stake.

I’ll leave some thoughts on that for next time. In the meantme, a very Happy Christmas to all LabourList readers and their families.