Nick Clegg, the Lib Dems and Tuition Fees

The Deputy Prime Minister, together with his Lib Dem colleagues in the Coalition are in some difficulty over tuition fees. They all signed a pledge. Now they have to make excuses why they have to renege on the pledge. Not just an off the cuff pledge; one they all signed on camera. Oh dear.

Their supporters, especially students, are very unhappy. They are young and having something of a baptism of fire into the ways of modern, dishonest and duplicitous politics. This is a good thing, as enough of them may be motivated to change the style of politics and make it more honest and honourable. When they have graduated and are busy paying back much bigger student loans than they were promised in the notorious pledge.

The Party grandees argue that they did not realise the state of the books and now they know how bad things are they have had to trim their ambitions for this parliament. They should have read this blog more carefully before the election. We knew exactly how bad things were. We had all the figures. Why did not the Lib Dem leadership?

There are two answers. All politicians of all parties, even the Tories, were in a state of denial about the scale of the crisis, which was the outcome of policies over the last twenty years or more, involving all parties of government. The Lib Dems went with the flow. The second answer is that the third party in our democracy enjoyed the luxury, once again, of making campaign pledges it could not keep, because it knew it would not have to, because it would not win. Then it did, or sort of.