In an interview the Liberal Democrat leader spells out plans to tackle Ukip by stressing benefits of EU membership
In perhaps the most cited speech of any Liberal leader, Jo Grimond closed the Liberal assembly in 1963, ahead of the 1964 election, with the promise: "I intend to march my troops to the sound of gunfire."
Nick Clegg, as he faces the European elections in May, has set his party on the same course. Faced with ever growing hostility to the EU, and to immigration, Clegg has decided to present the Liberal Democrats unambiguously as the party of "in" and of openness. He wants to be seen in these elections as the Stop Farage candidate and to make the debate about the very character of Britain. The planned TV debate with the Ukip leader will give him a chance not just to stand up to Farage, but to stand up for a Britain that does not want to hide.
There is an element of calculation in this. In a crowded field the Liberal Democrats risk being ignored and dumped into fourth place with Ukip replacing the Lib Dems as the amorphous party of protest. The Lib Dems may well be the party of in, but also come polling day the party of out, with all 12 of its MEPs expelled from the European parliament. It's not an outcome that Clegg discounts, saying simply if he is to lose any of his MEPs the thing he would hate most is losing them without a fight.
But this stance is also about Clegg as a person. One poll asked people this week to choose a single character trait that encapsulates Clegg: the answer came back simply, "liar". The stain of his U-turn on tuition fees appears to be indelible. The European elections at least give Clegg a chance to prove there are principles on which he will not compromise, no matter what the cost.
In an interview before his spring party conference in York, Clegg puts it like this: "The two main parties in this country no longer have anything meaningful to say about Europe. Labour seems to be enjoying sitting on its hands and in a rather cowardly manner failing to make the internationalist case at all. The Conservatives are deeply divided between a significant part that agrees with Ukip, and another part casting around for ideas to keep them in the EU, so Labour and the Conservatives are split or confused, or completely lost the courage of their convictions.
"When big parties create vacuums like that they get filled and they are being filled by the two other parties. Whether you agree with us or not, at least we have the merit of having clear and consistent views on this."
In a strange way the debate, he argues, "is a symptom of a wider division and the malaise in the main European parties".
He argues the conflicting visions being offered by the Lib Dems and Ukip encapsulate a profound new fault line in British and European politics about how to respond to globalisation. "The irony is that you have got the two smaller parties telling the country what the choice is, and the choice increasingly is whether we remain in or not. It is the same choice in Dutch, French and German politics – do you respond to globalisation by being open or closed?"
All this represents a wider trend. "My own view is that the dividing line – open/closed, engaged/disengaged – is increasingly emerging as a more important fault line in contemporary politics than the old language with which we used to slice and dice political parties.
"It used to be left/right, market/state, north/south, the bosses/workers. So in many ways what you are seeing in British politics and elsewhere strikes right at the identity of the nation state. In the footloose, fancy-free world do you think, however difficult it might be, it's better to get stuck in, to be engaged and be open, or do you seek to draw up the drawbridge? That will be the big story after the European elections. What is the general mood in Europe ? Is it one of introversion and chauvinism?"
Although Clegg will descend into the usual knockabout concerning Ukip's voting record in the European parliament, he is absolutely adamant he will not dismiss the well of anxiety from which Ukip draws. Indeed he says that anxiety is logical and "a profound instinct" that he "acknowledges, respects and understands".
"At a time of economic insecurity, in the wake of this massive cardiac arrest we suffered back in 2008, because of all of the anxieties associated with globalisation where people feel their lives are being affected by forces which they can't control, I think it is totally logical actually that some people will find it quite seductive when a politician says, 'it's someone else's fault and all your anxieties can be lifted from your shoulders if only we just shut the door'.
In contrast to David Cameron, he says: "I've never dismissed Ukip as nutters and fruitcakes. I take what they represent deadly seriously and, by the way, I wouldn't be having a debate with Nigel Farage unless I took what he says very, very seriously. The desire to pull up a drawbridge is "a very profound instinct and it is very dangerous to dismiss it. Progressive politicians should be very careful not to be lofty and metropolitan about this, it's a totally understandable reflex."
But he says his job is to ask people to think through what Farage is offering. However tempting the emotional reflex, the consequence of Ukip "would be much higher levels of unemployment, much higher levels of poverty, much greater levels of insecurity, a hugely diminished ability to deal with things like cross-border crime, to tackle climate change and a massive diminution in our influence in the world".
But Clegg also says he is not going to be cowed into taking Cameron's vow of silence about Farage's assertion that he finds Britain unrecognisable and is uncomfortable at the lack of English spoken on commuter trains out of Charing Cross.
"Modern Britain should not be a subject of despair, far from it. I think the fact that we have communities which are so diverse and that you can have people squashed together like sardines in the London tube from different backgrounds, different cultures, different skin colours, different traditions, different perspectives and still do so peaceably and generously to each other I think is a great thing. Farage wants to turn the clock back, he doesn't like modern Britain, he wants to dismiss so many of the big modern features of modern life – I want to embrace them."
Clegg also hopes to use the conference to burnish the party's credentials as the pre-eminent tax-cutting party, notably the party in the coalition that promoted lifting the personal tax allowance. It has been a hugely expensive policy, and the Liberal Democrats say they want to go further in the next parliament lifting the tax-free allowance to £12,500.
The independent IFS and more recently the Lib Dem-inclined thinktank Centre Forum have questioned the wisdom. Centre Forum has argued that the better way to help the poor is by increasing national insurance allowances, pointing out this would be twice as valuable as to the bottom fifth as further income tax cuts.
Clegg is unimpressed. "Ask anyone on £12,500 whether they think they are as rich as Croesus. We have taken 3 million people out of paying income tax altogether, and whatever this thinktank or economic blogger might think these people are not rich."
He is also confident his party will show that is distinctive from the Tories on the economy. "We are both committed to getting rid of the structural deficit by 2017-18. The huge difference is the Tories are not going to ask very wealthy people to pay a single penny of extra tax in order to finish that job, and the only people who will be asked to make additional savings will be the working poor who rely on help through the benefit system.
He claims the chancellor, George Osborne, is more nervous of his donors than he is willing to listen to the British people. "I think the Conservatives misjudge the British people."
With 15 months to go, Clegg may feel the die is cast for the general election. He is offering a centrist party in coalition anchoring the Conservatives in compassion and Labour in fiscal discipline. He is also now offering himself as an experienced hand in the ways of Whitehall. "I'm like anybody. You get better at what you're doing, the longer you do it. I hope I am humble enough to know I have not been in government before so I have learned what I can do to get things I want to get done in government, and I learn from my past mistakes.
"In the early stages of government, you may decide a bunch of things, government may issue a bunch of press releases, but they don't just necessarily happen. What is really invigorating to any politician is when you actually see the ideas you have been going on about for years happening in practice. That is rewarding."
And that at least is something on which few Liberal leaders either side of Grimond have been able to reflect. Reported by guardian.co.uk 10 hours ago.
In perhaps the most cited speech of any Liberal leader, Jo Grimond closed the Liberal assembly in 1963, ahead of the 1964 election, with the promise: "I intend to march my troops to the sound of gunfire."
Nick Clegg, as he faces the European elections in May, has set his party on the same course. Faced with ever growing hostility to the EU, and to immigration, Clegg has decided to present the Liberal Democrats unambiguously as the party of "in" and of openness. He wants to be seen in these elections as the Stop Farage candidate and to make the debate about the very character of Britain. The planned TV debate with the Ukip leader will give him a chance not just to stand up to Farage, but to stand up for a Britain that does not want to hide.
There is an element of calculation in this. In a crowded field the Liberal Democrats risk being ignored and dumped into fourth place with Ukip replacing the Lib Dems as the amorphous party of protest. The Lib Dems may well be the party of in, but also come polling day the party of out, with all 12 of its MEPs expelled from the European parliament. It's not an outcome that Clegg discounts, saying simply if he is to lose any of his MEPs the thing he would hate most is losing them without a fight.
But this stance is also about Clegg as a person. One poll asked people this week to choose a single character trait that encapsulates Clegg: the answer came back simply, "liar". The stain of his U-turn on tuition fees appears to be indelible. The European elections at least give Clegg a chance to prove there are principles on which he will not compromise, no matter what the cost.
In an interview before his spring party conference in York, Clegg puts it like this: "The two main parties in this country no longer have anything meaningful to say about Europe. Labour seems to be enjoying sitting on its hands and in a rather cowardly manner failing to make the internationalist case at all. The Conservatives are deeply divided between a significant part that agrees with Ukip, and another part casting around for ideas to keep them in the EU, so Labour and the Conservatives are split or confused, or completely lost the courage of their convictions.
"When big parties create vacuums like that they get filled and they are being filled by the two other parties. Whether you agree with us or not, at least we have the merit of having clear and consistent views on this."
In a strange way the debate, he argues, "is a symptom of a wider division and the malaise in the main European parties".
He argues the conflicting visions being offered by the Lib Dems and Ukip encapsulate a profound new fault line in British and European politics about how to respond to globalisation. "The irony is that you have got the two smaller parties telling the country what the choice is, and the choice increasingly is whether we remain in or not. It is the same choice in Dutch, French and German politics – do you respond to globalisation by being open or closed?"
All this represents a wider trend. "My own view is that the dividing line – open/closed, engaged/disengaged – is increasingly emerging as a more important fault line in contemporary politics than the old language with which we used to slice and dice political parties.
"It used to be left/right, market/state, north/south, the bosses/workers. So in many ways what you are seeing in British politics and elsewhere strikes right at the identity of the nation state. In the footloose, fancy-free world do you think, however difficult it might be, it's better to get stuck in, to be engaged and be open, or do you seek to draw up the drawbridge? That will be the big story after the European elections. What is the general mood in Europe ? Is it one of introversion and chauvinism?"
Although Clegg will descend into the usual knockabout concerning Ukip's voting record in the European parliament, he is absolutely adamant he will not dismiss the well of anxiety from which Ukip draws. Indeed he says that anxiety is logical and "a profound instinct" that he "acknowledges, respects and understands".
"At a time of economic insecurity, in the wake of this massive cardiac arrest we suffered back in 2008, because of all of the anxieties associated with globalisation where people feel their lives are being affected by forces which they can't control, I think it is totally logical actually that some people will find it quite seductive when a politician says, 'it's someone else's fault and all your anxieties can be lifted from your shoulders if only we just shut the door'.
In contrast to David Cameron, he says: "I've never dismissed Ukip as nutters and fruitcakes. I take what they represent deadly seriously and, by the way, I wouldn't be having a debate with Nigel Farage unless I took what he says very, very seriously. The desire to pull up a drawbridge is "a very profound instinct and it is very dangerous to dismiss it. Progressive politicians should be very careful not to be lofty and metropolitan about this, it's a totally understandable reflex."
But he says his job is to ask people to think through what Farage is offering. However tempting the emotional reflex, the consequence of Ukip "would be much higher levels of unemployment, much higher levels of poverty, much greater levels of insecurity, a hugely diminished ability to deal with things like cross-border crime, to tackle climate change and a massive diminution in our influence in the world".
But Clegg also says he is not going to be cowed into taking Cameron's vow of silence about Farage's assertion that he finds Britain unrecognisable and is uncomfortable at the lack of English spoken on commuter trains out of Charing Cross.
"Modern Britain should not be a subject of despair, far from it. I think the fact that we have communities which are so diverse and that you can have people squashed together like sardines in the London tube from different backgrounds, different cultures, different skin colours, different traditions, different perspectives and still do so peaceably and generously to each other I think is a great thing. Farage wants to turn the clock back, he doesn't like modern Britain, he wants to dismiss so many of the big modern features of modern life – I want to embrace them."
Clegg also hopes to use the conference to burnish the party's credentials as the pre-eminent tax-cutting party, notably the party in the coalition that promoted lifting the personal tax allowance. It has been a hugely expensive policy, and the Liberal Democrats say they want to go further in the next parliament lifting the tax-free allowance to £12,500.
The independent IFS and more recently the Lib Dem-inclined thinktank Centre Forum have questioned the wisdom. Centre Forum has argued that the better way to help the poor is by increasing national insurance allowances, pointing out this would be twice as valuable as to the bottom fifth as further income tax cuts.
Clegg is unimpressed. "Ask anyone on £12,500 whether they think they are as rich as Croesus. We have taken 3 million people out of paying income tax altogether, and whatever this thinktank or economic blogger might think these people are not rich."
He is also confident his party will show that is distinctive from the Tories on the economy. "We are both committed to getting rid of the structural deficit by 2017-18. The huge difference is the Tories are not going to ask very wealthy people to pay a single penny of extra tax in order to finish that job, and the only people who will be asked to make additional savings will be the working poor who rely on help through the benefit system.
He claims the chancellor, George Osborne, is more nervous of his donors than he is willing to listen to the British people. "I think the Conservatives misjudge the British people."
With 15 months to go, Clegg may feel the die is cast for the general election. He is offering a centrist party in coalition anchoring the Conservatives in compassion and Labour in fiscal discipline. He is also now offering himself as an experienced hand in the ways of Whitehall. "I'm like anybody. You get better at what you're doing, the longer you do it. I hope I am humble enough to know I have not been in government before so I have learned what I can do to get things I want to get done in government, and I learn from my past mistakes.
"In the early stages of government, you may decide a bunch of things, government may issue a bunch of press releases, but they don't just necessarily happen. What is really invigorating to any politician is when you actually see the ideas you have been going on about for years happening in practice. That is rewarding."
And that at least is something on which few Liberal leaders either side of Grimond have been able to reflect. Reported by guardian.co.uk 10 hours ago.