Sitting in my little bunker in Hong Kong, it was obvious - four years ago – that Nick Clegg had signed the death warrant of the Liberal Democrats. He’d betrayed the people who voted for his party – many of them as virulently anti-Tory as any Labour activist – in exchange for a mess of pottage and a “Deputy Prime Minister” business card.
It will be a long time before a vote for the Lib Dems can be construed as anything but a back door endorsement for a possible Conservative government. If it was so obvious to me – and, I’m sure, to thousands of others – you have to wonder why this particular reality eluded the powers-that-be in the party’s Great George St headquarters.
Maybe the hope was that the perceived influence of the Lib Dems as a coalition partner would be enough to salvage their credentials. With the Bedroom Tax, higher student fees, the growing wealth gap in the UK and the Royal Mail sell-off fiasco as but exhibits A-D in a list that could lap the alphabet several dozen times over, it is obvious that, as hopes go, that’s in the file marked “Clearly Forlorn”.
Clegg’s only possible lasting contribution – uniting the votes on the left for the first time since 1981 – also now seems somewhat unlikely. Ed Miliband’s charisma bypass and the timidity of the Labour Party maybe largely to blame here, while the conveniently-scheduled “feel-good” factor is also playing a role (expect the ideologically-driven austerity card to be back in play within weeks of Cameron’s return to Number 10 next year).
Add to this, you have UKIP. Is it right, as the papes are so keen to promulgate, that Farage and co (“Farrago”) are taking votes off Labour as much as off the Tories? I find that a little hard to believe. UKIP has a kind of unveneered Toryism (as much as it has a veneered National Frontism), making disillusioned Conservatives its natural parish.
I suspect that that enthusiasm of the right-wing press for spotting decamped Labour votes amid the UKIP faithful is partly wishful thinking and partly a bid to legitimise the few lefty waverers who may be tempted. It would also be refreshing to see a few more left-of-centre politicians veer off the hate-the-sin, love-the-sinner policy that has clearly been imposed from above when it comes to UKIP.
Is UKIP a racist party? Yes it clearly is. Enough skirting around “legitimate concerns”, “failure of conventional party politics” to engage etc. At the fundamental level, UKIP plays on the same concerns as the Nazis, putting an “acceptable” gloss on racism by exploiting the fears of local communities – those from “outside” taking something off you and your family. Sadly conventional politicians abnegate their responsibilities to tackle this head on and instead make craven overtures to UKIP voters, hoping to scrape a few racist crumbs towards their own re-election.
I do have to wonder, what is the point of a democracy when there are no men of vision to inspire the electorate, merely a sad collection of opinion poll jockeys willing to cater to the lowest common denominator in order to win office? Perhaps the one good thing we can take from the demise and demise of Nick Clegg, however, is that even the public will only tolerate tawdry opportunism for so long.
