Political

Nick Clegg’s weekend speech: the good, the bad, the reassuring, the instructive and the new

Yesterday Nick Clegg gave the keynote speech at the Liberal Democrat local government conference which, as is traditional, had large extracts trailed in advance. That can make actually sitting and listening to the speech feel rather old fashioned and redundant – but this was one of those cases where it was well worth doing, as Nick Clegg’s full speech was rather different in its implications than the advanced reports had suggested.

Listening to the full speech, five things struck me – one each being good, new, puzzling, instructive and bad.

The good

The influence of Ryan Coetzee was there in the reference to building a stronger identity for the party in the public’s eyes that is more than any particular combination of policies at any one time.

For people, including myself, who have thought this is important for quite some time it is tempting to be frustrated that the talk is about the abstract of how this would be a good thing to do rather than about the practicalities over what it should be and how to make it happen. However, the prominence given to this point in the speech was a good few steps forward from where we were in the not too distant past. Things are moving in the right direction – and Ryan deserves a fair share of the credit for that.

The bad

The early part of Nick Clegg’s speech was baffling. He took a swing at people in the party who think the party should not be a party of government and are desperate for the party to reach the more relaxed waters of opposition after the 2015 general election. I’d be all for him taking a swing at such people, if it were not for one crucial point.

There are almost none of them in the party.

It’s notable how very flat this part of the speech fell in the hall – and no surprise, given that people’s reaction on this and other occasions to hearing Nick take the fight to a nearly wholly imaginary enemy is one of bafflement, boredom or irritation. That’s bad enough, but to lead with it in a speech? Poor choice indeed.

The reassuring

Based on the advanced reports of the speech, I expected to be put off by what Nick Clegg would have to say about changing the party’s policy making process – both for demanding change without giving any details and for floating the idea here rather than, say, at the Federal Policy Committee (which I’m a member of).

However, I was wrong – and this part of the speech was not only better than I feared, it was actually rather good (and not just because it agreed with a point I had previously made at FPC!)

The point made in the speech was simply that the party needed to be much clearer on what its priorities and red lines are at the next election, which fits with discussions that have taken place at FPC.

It is a sensible conclusion from the lessons of 2010, even if you take a different route to reach it than Clegg did. (He argues the mistake was to make a pledge about tuition fees when it wasn’t one of the party’s priorities; I’d argue the mistake rather was not to make a pledge a priority; either way the conclusion you get to for next time is very similar.)

The instructive

Parts of the speech and subsequent Q&A session did go down very well with the audience. The two biggest rounds of applause were for being pro-European and – journalists who think the party is dying to jump into bed with Ed Miliband, please note – attacking Labour for its hypocrisy in first attacking government cuts and now saying it actually it won’t undo them. Labour is not popular with the party’s local government base.

The new

For those familiar with the details of internal party debates over how to campaign, there’s a new subject up for discussion after this May’s elections – the popularity with some of ‘Libby Light’ campaigns. The name comes from the party logo (the bird of liberty, hence Libby) and is a reference to local campaigns that made very little mention of the party or use of the logo. That has happened in the past too, but has been a particular point of debate since this May.

As Clegg made clear in his speech, he is not a fan of Libby Light campaigning – arguing that the public notice we are in government and see the party name on the ballot paper, so you cannot run away from it.

Anyway, that’s my take on the speech. What did you make of it?

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