Has Nick Clegg’s popularity bubble reached the point where it’s about to burst? Today the right-wing Fleet Street artillery have locked their sights on the Liberal Democrat leader, dredging up parts of his past that he probably didn’t want us to know about. This catapulting of shit towards Mr Clegg will only get worse as the election approaches in the hope that something sticks on him – presuming his short term popularity gains have the necessary staying power to keep him up there in the polls.
Following Cristina Odone’s amusingly off-the-mark attempt at smearing the Liberal Democrats on Monday (the comments on that article are worth a read), the Telegraph – amongst other papers – have today published a few stories about Nick Clegg.
If you watched last week’s episode of “I agree with Nick”, the Liberal Democrat leader washed his hands of any dodgy expenses claims or second home flipping by his MPs, but there are now some revelations that during the course of 2006 he had been accepting political donations from three prominent business figures into his own personal bank account. A former chairman of the standards committee has claimed these donations were “irregular”, and the white suit wearing former anti-sleaze MP and newsreader Martin Bell has claimed that Clegg needs to demonstrate that it is all above board.
Secondly, it has been revealed that in 2004-2005, Mr Clegg lobbied Europe in favour of watering down regulations designed to avert a banking crash. Yes, this is the same Nick Clegg that promised to hammer banks as much as humanely possible last week on the idiot lantern.
Thirdly, the Telegraph is reminding us of an article Nick Clegg wrote 8 years ago where he said that British people were obsessed with World War 2 and had delusions of grandeur. He’s probably right on that one.
The Express yesterday tried to smear Clegg over expenses, illustrating that he claimed expenses on his kitchen 3 times.
The Sun has come out with guns blazing, claiming that Nick Clegg performed a U-turn on Afghanistan policy. Former SAS hero Andy McNab labelled Clegg a “wobbler” because 8 months ago he wanted to pull out of Afghanistan, and now he is claiming that withdrawal would have “disastrous consequences”.
Various other military men have supported the view that you cannot have someone who keeps changing their mind to suit public opinion.
Conveniently, or not, foreign affairs is the main topic of tonight’s debate. My personal forecast is that Clegg will take a hit in the polls tonight, and Cameron will regain a few percentage points. The ball is of course in Cameron’s court though, because he can hammer Gordon Brown for lying to the Chilcot enquiry and cutting defence spending whilst humiliating Clegg on issues such as Trident and his commitment to scrapping the pound and joining the Euro.
But aren’t we getting closer to the real issue here: how many of Nick Clegg’s policies do we actually know?
The donations he recieved were perfectly legal, above board, recorded and registered. It would have been better had they not been paid into his private account, but the cheques were personally made out to him. Both Clegg and the Lib Dems have amply demonstrated that “all is above board”.
I don’t see how Clegg has done a U-turn on Afghani policy, he has purely reacted to a change in events and circumstances – surely a good attribute in a leader?
I’m not quite sure how Cameron can “humiliate” Clegg on Trident. Our policy is, I believe the sensible one – one backed up by an increasing number of Generals. And what commitment to scrapping the £ and joining the euro are you referring to???
For anyone interested, our policies are available to view on our website libdems.org.uk we are still the only Party to have a properly costed manifesto.
Having said all that!!!! It really is all gravy isn’t it?
The massive surge in support for the Lib Dems will not be swayed by right wing blogs/press/media, if anything, the continued personal attacks on Clegg will only shore up the support he is recieving.
The best thing the right could have done was to do what they have done for the past 70 years and just ignored us!
The reaction to a change of events you describe is a U-turn
Trident is necessary. Scrapping the Eurofighter, fine, but Trident is the ultimate deterrent and I certainly wouldn’t be happy living here if nuclear sabre rattling was undeterred by having our own weapons system.
I’m just doing a breakdown of the manifesto so readers don’t have to plough through 100 odd pages of it..
We should INCREASE Trident,we should buy retired MX ICBMS from the USA and build silos where scroungers live.
We could bulldoze the pollitts house and stick a silo there;make them live at the bottom of it, lol.
Identify all scrounger families in the UK,terminate all their benefits, the money goes towards opening brothels managed by the state,(like Holland) which would produce an income for more trident or sunsidies to reduce the price of petrol or alcohol etc.
and everyone is happy, lol
Scrap the Eurofighter? That’ll close down BAe at Warton and cause massive unemployment on the Fylde coast.
I know, but we don’t need it. You can’t build a defence policy around the needs of a private company. BAe should be encouraged to produce something we do need.
Anyway I thought Typhoon/Eurofighter was a separate company, based in Munich.
Just got Penny Martins leaflet through,it mentions tax credits etc, the Pollitt vermin will be pleased, I wont vote for her but I would give her one, lol.Thats my idea of socialism.
Clegg needs to keep saying one message tonight and that is his party was against the Iraq war, if the entire programme talks about the Euro and the EU he may struggle, he should just say there should be a referendum on it and that he wouldn’t walk away from it like Labour did and play it with a straight bat.
I’m looking forward to tonight’s programme, sadly the foreign policies of all three parties don’t fill me with excitement especially as regards the ring fencing of aid. I’ve lived in Mozambque and Zimbabwe and am no fan of aid, trade for processed goods works but aid is like pouring water through a pipe with lots of leaks and ends up with the poor of this country subsidizing the rich of Africa.
On the defence front Gordon Brown has one ace up his sleeves and that is the building of the two Queen Elizabeth aircraft carriers where as the Tories still haven’t confirmed their build although have made some approving noises.