Nick Clegg believes....

The most interesting thing about Nick Clegg is not whether he is telegenic and youthful. It's his politics.

Just as with David Cameron, the press attention will be on his manner and charm when it is his agenda that is interesting. Clegg is not just a boyish figure, he is part of a small tightly knit group with a radical agenda to change the party and if he wins he will bring that agenda with him.

I think he might help change the centre of gravity of the political debate, providing much greater political cover for centre right ideas.

But while it's clear that he would like to shift the position of the Lib Dems quite a lot, I suspect he will have a tough time doing so. If he is elected there will be a fight for the soul of that party and Clegg could easily lose.

During the contest I am going to be posting on some of Clegg's positions, identifying the ways in which he is trying to change the Lib Dem profile.

Let's start with Europe.

During the original debate on the European constitution, Nick Clegg backed a referendum (not in itself an innovation, this was a standard Lib Dem position). And once it was defeated in other countries, he argued against its revival.

His reasons for both these positions gives an insight into the Clegg method. The leadership hopeful is pretty committed to the European cause (he berated Gordon Brown for resisting the Euro, for instance) but avoids default establishment rhetoric on the EU. He wants to change the view of the Libs as being simply Europhiles.

So he has a third way position on the EU. He argues against the centralisation of power and the lack of democratic institutions in the EU, trying to move above the current debates to discussion of a more democratic, but still strongly European, settlement.

Here's a summary of his argument in the famous Orange Book which shows how he will try and triangulate on the issue:

Nick Clegg will alarm some readers by calling for powers over social and agricultural policy to be taken from European institutions and restored to national governments, but in reality his essay marks an advance in the party's thinking on Europe.

Throughout those long years when people made unkind jokes about telephone boxes and bar stools, the argument that Liberal members deployed to show that their party was still relevant was that it had been the first to advocate British membership of the Common Market. And in many ways we are still refighting the 1975 referendum campaign.

We are happier defending that membership than we are recognising that we have been "in Europe" for more than 30 years (and are going to remain there) and then moving on to examine our views about how the European project should be developing.

Clegg argues that EU powers have developed in a lopsided way. He asks why the EU possesses detailed legislation on the design of a buses, the use of seatbelts in cars and noise levels in the workplace yet "remains invisible as an entity in the UN, ineffective in promoting peace in the Middle East, toothless in tackling international crime and terrorism".

Being in favour of Europe is no longer enough: we have to decide what sort of Europe we want. Clegg's formulation is compelling: "the EU must only act if there is a clear cross-border issue at stake, or when collective EU action brings obvious benefits to all member states that they would not be able to secure on their own".

 

Comments

[Giles]

It is precisely because of such intelligent and nuanced positions that people like me - put off by the yah-boo style seen at Question time - are hoping for a Clegg victory. His time working with Leon Brittan was not wasted, and the insights gleaned from there can fit perfectly well within a Liberal framework - power closer to the people. There is no reason for the Liberal Democrats to be equated with unthinking Europhilia.

[Leo Watkins]

Very intelligent on Clegg's part. I may just have to go out and buy the Orange Book now.