[News] Nick Clegg issues an apology

[davywavy]

In an unusual move yesterday, deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Democrat party Nick Clegg issued a video in which he apologised to his supporters for his failure to keep pledges made when he thought there was no chance whatsoever he'd ever have to come good on them.
Speaking directly to camera, Nick Clegg said "There’s no easy way to say this: we made a pledge, we didn’t stick to it – and for that I am sorry. But I want to promise you something now. I will never do this again. I'm never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you."

With the saddest expression he could muster, he continued: "Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie and hurt you."

Many former Liberal democrat supporters did not feel this was enough. Nick Walker, a unemployed Social Studies graduate, said "I voted for Nick Clegg because I wanted to vote for a party which would never get elected so I'd never have to accept that the real world involves compromise. As it is, this has made me engage with reality and I don't like it and want it to stop. If it doesn't, I'll hold me breath until I turn blue before voting for someone else who'll never get any power - like the Greens - at the next election."

*Breaking news* In the past few minutes, the Liberal Democrats have adopted giving you up, letting your down, and running around and deserting you as their core policies for the 2015 election. A spokesman for the party said "This in no way contradicts Nick Clegg's earlier statement."

Comments

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Ohhh there needs to be a lip-synced video for this!

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Consider that your task for the day.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Sadly I wouldn't know how to start such a thing!

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

ditto.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Clegg can't really win this, can he? It's like his whole plan from the beginning has been to wait it out, assume that things will be better come next election, and then explain that it was reasonable and necessary to sign up on what's effectively a Tory economic programme because there was a genuine and acute budgetary crisis on. And fine, that sounds plausible to me. But voters don't think that way; voters who thought they were giving their support to a Messiah of the Neglected Centre Left certainly are not going to think that way. The LD's are going to get savaged.

If I were Nick Clegg, I'd be doing my best to get some very flashy victories for the leftier, Simon Hughes-y, "Beveridge Group" wing of the party -- nothing that would substantially threaten the Orange Book-types' cohabitation arrangement with the Tories, of course, but enough to make headlines and get some of those voters back into the fold. Of course, it'd have to be a pretty darn delicate operation. I still think that the whole kerfuffle over Clegg letting down his voters over tuition fees was all about the Lib Dems dropping the ball tactically: There's ample evidence Clegg knew that promise was insane -- that no coalition would sustain it -- and he told his party doyens as much. They still talked him into supporting a "no rises" platform, and when that platform predictably careened into a fiery end like the Hindenburg, the Lib Dems got the blame. Well, that's what you get for promising things you know you can't deliver. Since he's apologising for making the pledge rather than breaking the pledge he is, I think, making a reasonable enough statement, but I'm 100% certain it's not a politically advantageous statement. They're going to eat him alive.