Nick Clegg

Nick Clegg

"Two months before the general election, Nick Clegg warned there would be "riots" on the streets if the Conservatives introduced extreme cuts. Now they have begun – and Clegg himself is the chief cutter.

There was a whiplash moment this Wednesday. Inside the House of Commons, a pale-faced and barely coherent Clegg was championing the trebling of tuition fees at Prime Minister’s Question Time, despite the fact he promised before the election to “implacably oppose” this move because it would be “a disaster”. Then, in a low rumble, the chants of the 50,000 betrayed students massed outside began to echo into the chamber. He began to stumble: “We have stuck to our ambition? our wider ambition?” (Laughter, jeers). “Our policy is more progressive?” (Hoots from all sides, including his own.) “The truth is before the election we didn’t know...” The chants got louder, and the excuses got more contorted.

Clegg is one of the great mysteries of British politics. Before the election, he told us “there isn't a serious economist in the world who agrees with the Conservatives... [that] we should pull the rug out from under the economy with immediate spending cuts.” Now he is one of the leading champions of doing exactly that. In just a few days after the election, he cleared a space in his swanky new ministerial offices and staged a bonfire of his principles." Johann Hari The Independent

Watching clips on 'This Week' last night, Clegg looked dreadful in the Commons. What this decision to collude with the Tory cuts is doing to his soul is the stuff of Faustian drama. How did he feel when most of the Tory benches cheered and roared their approval of Osborne's cuts speech? How does he look his party activists in the face back in his Hallam constituency?

"Whatever you think of these policies, how can anybody defend gathering the votes of millions of people on a clear mandate of opposing these Tory proposals, and then – as soon as the door of his ministerial limo swings open – championing each one of them? Remember: David Cameron got 36 percent of the vote in Britain, and even that was on a promise that “we’re not talking about swingeing cuts.” Some 60 percent of us voted for parties to his left. We could see the Britain he wanted to build – just this week, Great Ormond Street Hospital discovered it is facing a 20 percent cut in its budget – and we rejected it decisively. You can agree or disagree with the swinging of this scythe, but nobody can claim it is democratic." ibid.

To add weight to that argument. 35% of the electorate did not vote. Between them, the Conservatives and Liberals were supported by 38% of the electorate. Not such a mandate then.

And as for the students? The only question really is why it has taken them so long to get off their backsides and campaign against these iniquitous policies?