Today, interestingly enough, is Lame Duck Day. Lame duck in this instance is not referring to a bird with a sore leg, but instead to ineffective politician reaching the end of his tenure. So, who could possibly fit this description? Why, of course! Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, who is possibly the embodiment of the biggest anticlimax my generation of voters (I'm 25) have yet seen. (N.b. this entire post will only be relevant to the UK and British politics, so if you have no interest in such things, I would advise you to stop reading now. You have been warned.) So, in honour of Lame Duck Day, let's take a closer look at what Nick Clegg promised, what he has achieved, and how effective he has been to find out just how much of a lame duck he really is, and whether he should be celebrated or torn apart on this most festive of days.
One of Nick Clegg's many public humiliations was on the matter of a proposed alternative voting system, or 'AV' as it was known. On this matter it wasn't just the Conservative party who crushed Clegg's dreams, but the British public themselves. Clegg managed to battle AV though to a public referendum, but by the time this stage had been reached, the proposal had been whittled down to what Clegg himself termed 'a miserable little compromise.' The majority of those who favoured changing the current first past the post system wanted it to be replaced with a number of votes equals the number of seats kind of system. This was not part of the AV proposal, which instead asked for voters to rank the candidates in order of preference. It didn't help matters that the figurehead of the 'Yes to AV' campaign was the nationally maligned Clegg himself. Thus, when a referendum was conducted the British public overwhelmingly voted no to AV, and the Guardian compiled an extensive list of reasons why.
Their stance on tuition fees is possibly the biggest public turnaround the Lib Dems have done since joining the coalition in 2010. On the campaign trail, they targeted students - who were at the time paying up to £3000 a year for their courses - with the pledge of abolishing tuition fees altogether. Students came over to the yellow side in their droves, happy for a politician to actually appear to be paying attention to their protests for once. Since becoming junior partners in the coalition however, the opposite of this has happened, with tuition fees tripling to a potential maximum of £9000 a year. Almost every university in the entire United Kingdom immediately chose to increase their fees for each student to the full maximum, meaning that a undergraduate who studies towards a 4 year course will come away with at least £36000 of debt and very little prospect of getting an appropriately highly paid graduate job. Nick Clegg did publicly apologise for going back on his word in this way, but the general reaction to this is one of 'too little, too late.' It has also come to light in recent months that the Lib Dems had no intention of pushing for the abolition of fees in the first place. Nice one Nick.
Public opinion polls of Clegg and the Liberal Democrats hit a record high of of 34% on 20 April 2010, a fortnight or so before the election, which by the 8 December 2010 had plummeted to 8%, a record low. Every time Clegg has tried to go up against Cameron he's been either simply ignored or steamrollered by the Tory Express, and people have lost faith in him and his party. The yellow ties did badly in the local election in May 2012, when they lost a full third of the seats they were defending, 'a disappointing and difficult night for the Liberal Democrats' which prompted Clegg to admit he was 'really sad' - a fatalistic soundbite if ever I've heard one.
The coalition government has been gleefully parodied by Armando Iannucci in the latest series of The Thick Of It. If you have a passing interest in politics and the world around you and you haven't seen The Thick Of It - watch it, you're missing out. Bill Bailey has bastardised the classic Sting & the Police song Roxanne in his stand up show Dandelion Mind; "Nick Clegg you don't have to wear that dress tonight, walk the streets for money, you don't have to sell your body to the right" Furthermore, there is an entire blog dedicated to nothing but images of Nick Clegg looking sad. Even Nick himself realises he is something of a joke, and he authorised an autotune remix 'song' of him apologising to the citizens of the UK over not following through on his promise to vote against a rise in tuition fees, on the proviso that all proceeds go to charity.
But it's not all bad news! The website What The Hell Have The Lib Dems Done? was created in the style of it's famous counterpart What The Fuck Has Obama Done So Far?, which was publicised by the likes of Carrie Fisher. This website does however quote almost solely from the Lib Dem manifesto, which is a statement of intention rather than a record of achievements. So the Lib Dems have achieved some things, but unlike Obama they are the smaller partner of a coalition government, meaning they have much less real power and many more opportunities for their measures to be blocked. This has led to Nick Clegg and his entire party becoming ineffectual lame ducks in every sense of the word. Some reports suggest that Nick's days are numbered, but Clegg has been on what the nation perceives to be his last legs for a good few months now and yet has shown no signs of stepping down. It looks as though this particular lame duck could continue to limp on for a while yet. Also, Clegg is at the end of the day only a figurehead, a visible scapegoat for the dissatisfaction of the masses, and if the Lib Dems think they can just get rid of him and win back the trust of the people, I very much doubt that this will turn out to be the case.
The failure of the Liberal Democrat party as part of the coalition has lost them an entire generation of voters, the vast majority of which will more than likely go back to Labour, myself included. I certainly can't imagine voting for them again any time soon, and the entire party would have to make significant changes for me to even consider them as a viable option again even in the very distant future. They have, as a party, committed political suicide, disappointing thousands upon thousands of voters who made the fatal mistake of trusting the self proclaimed 'party who don't break promises.' At least with a reasonably substantial amount of voters falling back from the Lib Dems to the left, Labour should stand a good chance of winning the next General Election in 2014. Fingers crossed!
Wikipedia
Lame duck http://politicsandfinance.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/what-do-you-feed-lame-duck.html
Nick clegg looking sad http://nickclegglookingsad.tumblr.com
last image of Clegg looking sad http://labourlist.org/2012/03/caption-contest-for-nick-clegg-opportunity-knocks/nick-clegg-looking-sad/
Lib Dem logo http://www.tfa.net/2011/09/16/liberal-democrat-mps-respond-to-the-eu-referendum-question/
No comments:
Post a Comment