Nick Clegg's speech was politics at its most cynical

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/19/nick-clegg-speech-liberal-democrat

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The mass delusion that afflicts much of the media during conference season is something to behold. Three or four weeks, if you count the TUC conference which most don't frankly, of booze, late nights, over-heated hotels, frisky delegates, MPs and hacks whose wives don't understand them, dried-up egg sandwiches, warm white wine. Well, it makes you queasy and slightly mad. Oh how I miss it.

But I have to say I have never seen the collective insanity kick in so quickly. Nick Clegg's speech has been described as "well-crafted". What?

Clegg, the anti-matter of British politics, made a speech based on three things: 1) the things he has stopped the Tories doing; 2) the things that show he a nice bloke really; and 3) the things he will do to keep power. Which can be summed up as: anything.

This was accompanied by some dreadful jokes and that awful effort that modern politicians make where they pretend to be in episode of Who Do You Think You Are. Thus they reel off some family history to show us they are not as posh and privileged as we know them to be. Often this is followed by a list of "ordinary" people they once stepped upon.

Most will see a soundbite on TV. Clegg's was "Our mission is anchoring Britain to the centre ground". Hold me back, it's so exciting. I had no idea we had drifted off it.

For this is what the anti-politics of the Lib Dems now appear to amount to. Remember that the Tories did not win the last election even after 13 years of Labour and with an unpopular leader. The Lib Dems got them into power on the rebound. The early bromance was sickening but apparently the Lib Dems have held their relationship with the Tories together for us. The children. Sorry, the electorate.

Many of us did think that a coalition would be a more grownup way of being governed. Instead it has been treated by many Tories mistakenly as a mandate. This is why Michael Gove can force top-down reordering of the education system in the face of experts who because they have been in classrooms are categorised as rabid Trotskyites. This is why Jeremy Hunt can sell off bits of the NHS or we can buy what we already own: the Royal Mail. Vince Cable pipes up from time to time but the Lib Dems are just Tory-lites swallowing the austerity narrative and now boasting of recovery. The one discernible policy of free school meals is nice. Just like not tripling tuition fees would have been.

But then this is a party that rarely walks it like it talks it. A totally fabricated discussion about the niqab veiled the fact that the Lib Dems are very poor in terms of diversity or representing women. They have no women in safe seats and face wipeout. Still there can't be women-only shortlists as that would be illiberal. As you were, men.

But then the prize of doing anything differently has given way to the cynicism that power involves. Their idealism must have lasted nearly a week.

So now what Clegg is asking us to vote for is simply him. And permanent coalition. A party that will stop other parties having their wicked way. Vote for the centre he says, having ensured the centre is way to the right because he has helped shift it there.

Most leader speeches are dire and over-hyped, this one was deeply depressing. Clegg was asking to be in power for power's sake. He talked of the liberals being anti-establishment. What is the evidence of this?

"We are not here to pro up the two-party system: we are here to bring it down."

What ever does this mean? Party membership is falling fast. Less than 1% of the electorate is in any political party. We don't need the Lib Dems to bring down the party system, it is crumbling before our eyes. This non-speech will not even register outside the hall where the party is no longer seen as worthy of trust.

Still, as usual, Clegg came off stage to the obligatory standing ovation and the mandatory spousal embrace.

Sure there remain some decent Liberal Democrats out there but this was politics at its most desperately cynical. Vote Lib Dem because … because they will keep everything ticking over. And they like being in government. Is this it? Power abhors a vacuum. We knew that. At least the vacuum now has a name and a face. Nick Clegg.

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