Nick Clegg speech: powered up

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/18/nick-clegg-speech-powered-up

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The Lib Dems, according to the polls, could be on the verge of vanishing down the electoral plughole. In the surveys, they bump along in the low double figures and worse, well behind the other parties, and sometimes trailing Ukip. Electoral annihilation has often been the fate of junior partners in coalitions, particularly when coalition itself is unfamiliar.

It's important to remember this because the mood inside the Glasgow conference centre on the final day of the Lib Dems' autumn conference reflected none of it. For the first time in three and a half years, that lingering sense of betrayal had gone. Nick Clegg, whose hold on power even last year was not quite secure, now seems master of all he surveys. This may partly have been a reflection of new heights of conference management, with barely a platform defeat (in itself revealing a new confidence of purpose). But more probably, the activists themselves were at last buoyed by a faint sensation of thaw in the long post-crash economic winter.

So a newly authoritative and assured Nick Clegg delivered a well-crafted speech (although the jokes are still dire) that laid out an unapologetic account of the past and a bold plan for the future. This was a leader who having taken his party through fire into government for the first time for 70 years could, briefly at least, turn his back on the wreckage of Lib Dem ambition on constitutional reform, move on from broken promises on tuition fees, and lay out a balance sheet that could be construed as a Lib Dem victory with, as the icing on the week's cake, the announcement of free school meals for all children in their first three years at primary school in England, and contrast it with Tory plans for a marriage tax break.

The detail of other advances, on the pupil premium and apprenticeships, on women's pensions and parental leave, on the green bank and the raised income tax threshhold, may not all bear close examination, but nor is it to be dismissed. These are mostly policies a contemporary Conservative government would not have adopted outside coalition. And in a party that has run nothing bigger than a local authority for three generations, each one is a reason to be cheerful. But there was a bigger prize for Mr Clegg – to be able to tell his activists that they have become a party of government, one moreover that by making hard and unpopular calls on the economy has proved its credibility. Mr Clegg could declare without irony that the Lib Dems belong in power, and at last lay to rest the lingering echo of David Steel's hubristic imprecation to go home and prepare for power.

But, as Mr Clegg knows, being in power is not enough. The old transformational agenda may take longer to achieve, but it is still the goal. So coalition should be seen not – as both Conservative and Labour would prefer – as an emergency expedient for a single term. Voters must be persuaded that it is the best form of government, and that is where Mr Clegg has now planted the Lib Dem standard. Lib Dems are to be an anchor on the larger parties, a perpetual Goldilocks – although his centre position was unmistakably to the right. Most strikingly, Mr Clegg advanced his case not in terms of the old dream of a realigned politics, where Lib Dems would in his phrase be "folded" once again into one of the two big parties and take it in turns to run the country, but in the framework of a new pluralist politics. We're not here to prop up the two-party system, Mr Clegg claimed: we're here to bring it down.

It is certainly just as well that the Lib Dems enjoy the sunlit uplands while they can: dark clouds, in the ominous shape of European and local elections, are rolling up over the horizon. They are likely to be a severe test of Mr Clegg's leadership. The temptation now for his detractors will be to relax and relish the prospect of the Lib Dems on the glide path to electoral disaster. But a hung parliament remains at the least a possible outcome – maybe the most likely one. And for that reason, if no other, Ed Miliband should take Mr Clegg's speech seriously and read it with care.

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