Hello there, it seems the more things change, the more they stay the same. This rings particularly true in that weird disturbing, infinitely despicable world of politics, which appears to have replaced cockfighting as the national sport of the aristocratic elite. I can picture the lobby group offices as being in strange warehouses, illegal gambling dens in the Cotswolds betting on just which policy will screw the working class over the most. And then maybe a bet for which single politician is the most hated person in the country.
I suspect Nick Clegg would be close to the top of the list.
Before I get to the point where I claim that Nick Clegg is to politics what “We Built this City” by Starship was to music, I think a little bit of history needs to be put in order, both of Mr Clegg and myself.
I myself come from a working class family in the northwest of England, pretty steadfast labour voters for the most part, me and my brother sharing someone lefter wing views than the most but still for the most part supported that Labour, while under it's Nu-Labour guise that meant it had to be Tory and capitalist baiting, at least seemed to give a shit about the people of which it has been voted to govern. Then scandal after scandal and disaster after disaster rocked Labour and it's unfortunate dour leader, Gordon Brown, who seemed to have little going for him up against Tony Blair replicant David Cameron. Cameron's early pitches for the Tory party, telling them “Don't go blue, go green!” and making every single simpering pathetic possible attempt to prove his hipster liberal principles. I mean, kids you gotta vote for someone who listens to The Killers and Radiohead! But this boneheaded attempt to appeal to a set of voters who have ingrained memories of their parent's struggles with Mrs Thatcher didn't just consist of Desert Island Discs and impossibly bad slogans, oh no! His policies consisted of just two for the first 3 years he spent as leader of the conservative party; Hug a Hoody and ride a bicycle into work (Limo escort behind optional).
It's the wonderful irony that gets me.
Anyway, the British public seemed to be forced to make a choice between an increasingly compromised Gordon Brown, who was blamed for every single misfortune befalling the country, some being very much his fault (“Oh, the economy is sinking, I blame the previous chance- oh wait, that was me...”) while others, like the floods and the expenses scandal (which in fairness affected all two and a half major parties at the time) really were stuff he didn't really have a hope in hell of doing anything about; or David Cameron, a genetically formulated politician who often seemed more reptilian than man and has to be taught what human feelings, emotions and values are.
I'd personally sack the incompetent dolt hired to teach him those things.
This was the way of the world until late 2009, when a new saviour swept the lands in the eerily similar shape of fresh faced Nick Clegg, a kind of new liberal democrat, trying to sweep away the vaguely old dour aged image of the party, and this was for me a little bit of an alarm bell. You see, I'm a fan of that old Lib Dem view of politics, and was a huge fan of Charles Kennedy in particular, a great political mind ruined by his own very public weakness. He was succeeded by Menezes Campbell, touchingly nicknamed “Ming Campbell” by journalists whose jokes were somehow older than Ming himself, who seemed to consider the building of the Pyramids to be a recent memory. After he left to fight Flash Gordon, Nick Clegg stepped up to the podium, and brought with him a mix of that wonderful Lib Dem idealism and values as well as a pragmatic gift of gab that was enough to make a lot of people seriously consider him as having the potential to actually win an election, helped a lot by a lot of very crowd pleasing decisions, such as vows to improve the NHS, a promise to not increase the tuition fees, which he famously (well, infamously now) posed with while on the campaign trail, and a general view that he was a new face that understood and connected with the people as opposed to the dinosaur and the reptile. Things were so hot for Nick that in live debates the main way that the other two parties scored points was to say “I agree with Nick”
Still leaves a sore spot for a lot of you doesn't it?
So many people fell for this hook, line and sinker, almost including me. That by the way isn't some kind of “I told you so” on the majority of the British population; I don't think too many people really saw what he did coming, but I do fear that I must have had an omen in that polling booth, my pen hovering ominously over the Liberal Democrats box, before I quickly took it away and voted for the Green Party. An omen that, some how, in some way he wasn't quite on the level. Regardless of my actual vote for the most part I believed in the hype, mostly because I wanted to believe. I wanted for Nick Clegg to swoop in and save Britain from itself, and I thought the curious ending to the 2010 general election (where no party got enough of an overall majority to actually win) which led to the first coalition government in the history of Great Britain. Alright, so it was with the Tories, but we all thought it would eliminate the nutters on both sides; the Tory racist/sexist/homophobic bigwigs wouldn't get a word in edgeways, and Lib Dem policy would be refined to be less idealistic but more possible, and so the potential for change was there.
We all probably know what happened in the next year and a half. Everything got so much worse so quickly. The Tories very quickly shed their skin of humanity in scenes reminiscent of the show V, while Nick Clegg very blatently, very clearly and very pathetically whimpered and backpedaled and simpered and cowardly broke his promises on education, in a similar way to how Cameron betrayed his promises about the NHS. The heroic, brave Lib Dem Nick Clegg became Cameron's poodle, a little pet that's carried around sometimes as an odd curiosity to rich Tory aristocrats, and basically pulled the Lib Dem party down with it. For a year and a half the so called “ConDem” coalition was really the Conservatives dominating while all the Lib Dems could do was lie back and think of England. All that hug a hoodie nonsense went out the window in the summer, as Cameron essentially called the underclass a cancer on society, a philosophy which has been echoed in his constant attempts to rid the country of mythical “Benefit scroungers” who must be stopped by ruining everyone else's lives.
All the while Clegg has done nothing.
After a year of this, there are louder and louder rumblings of rebellion in the Liberal Democrat ranks, and honestly who can blame them? The people at top, mostly Clegg himself but some of the upper Lib Dem brass, is dragging the party through the mud and basically ensure that there is no possible way the Lib Dems will ever get into power again.
All because Clegg was willing to sacrifice everything, especially his balls to get even the slightest whiff of power.
Even if he had to become a dickless yesman to do it.
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