When the Coalition was formed, received wisdom was that Vince Cable, and to a lesser degree, Simon Hughes would be “the problem”. And the problem was that they were of the Left, and would therefore drag the government as a whole in that direction as the price for their support. The supposed danger in this was that there would then be a right-wing counter-reaction from the Tory backbenches, thus splitting the coalition apart. This theory should always have been seen as nonsensical because it had been tested to destruction during the five years of David Cameron’s leadership. Simply put: nothing Cameron did, no matter how green the platitude or abject the support for Labour’s disastrous fiscal policies provoked revolt in opposition. Nor, with the slate-rigging of candidate selection, should revolt ever have been realistically expected of the new parliamentary party. To put that another way, even if Mr Secretary Cable got everything he wanted, that couldn’t be as obnoxious to Thatcherite Toryism as David Cameron already has been. But Vince hasn’t got what he wanted. Tuition fees are just a part of the hard compromises he’s been obliged to make in pursuit of office. Yet it’s Nick Clegg’s failure to see where Liberal self-interest should lie that provides the greatest long term risk to Tory fortunes, for it’s Clegg’s vacillations, not Cable’s, which put the Liberal Party at risk. And without a viable Liberal Party, historically it’s the Tory Party that suffers.
Melissa Kite provides an excellent summary of the mess the Liberals have got themselves into. In short, knowing that something needs to be done to salvage their reputation in the eyes of their own voters, Lib Dem leaders have been publicly paralysed between supporting, opposing, or, for it still amounts to the same thing, opposing by abstention government policy on tuition fees. Far from being a left wing diehard, Vince Cable has been prepared all along to support the policy he nominally presides over (though David Willetts in fact implements). However, Clegg’s indecision has meant that this hasn’t been even semi-officially confirmed until this weekend. The Liberal leader’s goal has been to find a way out of the student crosshairs but he hasn’t found one. The reason why illustrates the danger for the Liberal Party, and it’s one which the Tory Right knows all too well. Nick Clegg won’t do what he should – which is cynically and cold-bloodedly oppose government policy, while staying in the government – because he’s too close to the bleating Cameroon heart of coalesced Conservatism. Hence the Liberals’ problem isn’t true-believing left-wing ‘dinosaurs’ like Cable, it’s a surfeit of crypto-Cameroons like Clegg.
What Nick Clegg, in the interests of his own party, as distinct from that of the Coalition, should do is oppose the government on tuition fees. What, after all, was the point of negotiating the Coalition Agreement get-out on fees if you don’t take advantage of it? Clegg’s personal weakness is the core of problem for the Lib Dems. Of course their leader should crack the whip and appease his voters. Not doing so is, infamously, the central Cameroon critique of where Thatcherites are supposed to have gone wrong. Give the voters want they want, not what you want them to have, has been the modernising refrain, and the voters Clegg ought to be concerned with are those he already has, or, at any rate, had. Obviously the fact that exposing Cable – who, indeed, should be obliged to support his department’s policy, while other Liberals ministers pointedly abstain and prominent backbenchers like Kennedy and Campbell are licensed to rebel – would do him no good inside the Liberal Party ought also to be a fact a strong leader was aware of and was willing to exploit.
Tuition fees as an issue was anticipated in May, and it was something that was capable of being a win-win-win for Clegg. He could have had his cake and eaten it; the Coalition could have had the policy he privately appears to favour; while, at the same time, his party could have paraded, via the device of abstention, its opposition to government (or ‘Tory’) policy; and his main, destabilising rival for the leadership could have been weakened in the eyes of the party’s activists. Yet none of this now will happen. Instead, the ministerial Liberals and leader-loyalists on the backbenches will troop through the lobbies, self-evidently to the detriment of Lib Dem support in the country. Worse still high-profile rebellions by former Lib Dem leaders will advertise Liberal disunity while doing nothing to regain thereby alienated support.
By not taking advantage of a supposed Liberal principle – opposition to tuition fees –in order to distinguish himself from the Conservatives, Nick Clegg reveals himself for what he is. The Liberals’ tragedy is not that Clegg is a closest Tory, but that he’s an open Cameroon. What would keep the Liberal Party in business as a viable, independent political entity would be an affectation to the public of the politics of Vince Cable, allied to a steely determination that these shouldn’t prevent the party from staying in office. As it is, precisely because of his nice but ultimately weak style of leadership, Nick Clegg can’t stop himself from self-indulgently acting on his own Wet Tory principles. Which in turn prevents him from doing such ruthlessly necessary things as appeasing Liberal voters by abstaining on, i.e. opposing tuition fees. This road takes the Liberals directly to electoral destruction, and this is disastrous news for the Tories. For without a Liberal party to split the self-evident non-Tory majority in Britain, Labour will inevitably gain more than we will. When ex-Lib Dem voters reject Clegg-in-office – as they would not reject Cable-in-office, were he setting the tone of Lib Dem participation in the Coalition – they will go disproportionately to the left and to Labour. The irony is that it’s Cable who would stop this. So stick to your principles, left wing Liberals just as much as right wing Tories.