Why Nick Clegg will have to try harder

I missed the Liberal Democrat leadership debate on Question Time last night, as, I am sure, did you. But a good friend and acute political observer called me this morning and told me I should make good this omission.

So I have. And I understand why my friend called.

Two things come out of the programme.

The first is that it led me to question the assumption that Nick Clegg will easily defeat Chris Huhne.

The general idea is that Clegg will win because he is much better on television and a superior performer. Well maybe that's true, but I have to say it wasn't last night.

Clegg is an intelligent and charming man, which is why journalists generally like him, but he seemed lightweight and uncomfortable last night. He hadn't very good lines to take and his position on Trident (almost the only substantive thing he said) is incoherent.

Lib Dem members do tend to elect the favourite, but Huhne already has a base from the last contest. And he was much the better of the two last night - clearer, weightier and no less telegenic.

The second thing I question after last night is whether Clegg, if he does win, will be a success as leader. I've always assumed he would be, but I fear he did seem very callow and really not quite ready.

Watch it yourself and see if you agree.

Comments

[Duncan]

I'm not sure i do agree completely.

Clegg certainly showed he isn't the finished article and even looked a bit impatient at times, but he also showed flashes of what he's capable of
e.g. 'the i'm angry about...' bit that he did about why he came into politics.

I also thought Huhne's body language, timing, rhetoric and symbolism all showed shortcomings. Lots of nodding when Clegg was speaking. Using Clegg's language rather than making points his own. Rescuing Clegg a few times needlessly. Comparing the Lib Dems to a little boy at one stage. Reminding people that he lost several times to get into parliament.

There wasn't a huge gulf, but i thought Clegg showed far more potential of the two.

[will]

Have to say I agree - everyone seems to have been queing up to tell us members that Nick is 'the great communicator' but faced with the hard questions I think Chris came out on top.

[olly kendall]

It was a bit FA Vase-esque. A little boring, repetitive and unenlightening (Dimbleby is as much to blame as the candidates).

Clegg was the superior of the two on the night. Given the media hype of Clegg and the frequent dismissal of Huhne, expectations of Huhne were low and extremely high of Clegg. On that basis, i.e. playing off a handicap as it were, then you could argue that Huhne did better - simply because he surprised people that that he is still a contender.

It has reminded people that this will be a closer contest that some media pundits have suggested.

[Peter from Bath]

I thought Huhne came out the better of the two, better on Trident, better on the Environment, tougher on PR, the key to a better form of Politics and Government.

[Northernhousewife]

I watched it. Well, most of it. To be honest, I got a bit bored and channel hopped at one point. I felt Huhne came out on top.
The previous poster is correct in stating that we must accept we had a preconceived idea of what we were about to see. Expectations played a part. But they will play a part with the general public aswell. The only thing that has been widely reported about these two is that one is supposed to be a telegenic communicator and one is not.
Expectations were high for the "unscripted, telegenic David Cameron" at the in the much more pressured circumstances of this years party conference. He did the job.
There is a danger that when the public see Nick Clegg, they will say "Is that it?".

[Simon R]

Both were an utter bore. The Lib Dems being such a small parliamentary party have very little depth of talent, and with Simon Hughes, Mark Oaten, Vince Cable and Charles Kennedy all out of the race for one reason or another, these two lightweights are the best the party has to offer. Charles Kennedy and his 'thousands of emails asking me to stand' will be quick enough to come to the rescue when the Lib Dems under-perform at the next election. Only by popular demand, not because he wants it of course..

[alan maddox]

It's a shame that that Vince Cable isn't in the contest.He seems quite down to earth,reliable trustworthy sort of bloke.Three in a contest would be much more fun,and especially if one of them was female.

[Mike Whitecross]

I thought Clegg was rather out of his depth in this live debate and had a slightly deperate air about him. I am a Tory supporter but the country needs the Liberal Democrat Party to have a leader who can punch a bit of weight in the three party system.

Mike

[Adam Neilson]

After Huhne's answer to the question about coalition government, Clegg made his point about not wishing the LibDems to become an 'annexe' to another party; we then saw Huhne nodding vigorously and he mouthed 'i like that'... then of course used it himself a couple of minutes later. There was too much of this - as another posting mentioned, the nodding was excessive.

I've never really heard Clegg expound before, as opposed to Huhne who I saw in action during the last leadership campaign. Back then I thought he was probably the best option the LDs had, but during this 'debate' (ha ha) I thought Clegg seemed much more promising.

[Julian Cox]

I will start listening to Nick Clegg and start taking Chris Huhne seriously and just perhaps think of the Liberal Democrats as something other than illiberal and anti-democratic when their new leader does what that gurning disgrace Mezies failed to do and that is kick Baroness Tonge out of the Illiberal Democrats for her vilification of Israel and her holding all British Jews to be responsible for the actions of Israel, a foreign and sovereign power.

And while I am at it, her colleague in the Lords, Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger, president of Liberal Judaism, has not exactly gone out of her way to condemn Tonge either, has she.

Tonge is a disgrace to any democratic political party... and there is an under-current of something very nasty in the Illiberal Democrats while she remains a party member...

[john]

I saw these two ob sundays politics show, reminded me of my boyhood times in the school playground.

[Northernhousewife]

Will "Calamity Clegg" stick?

[Paul]

I agree actually. I thought Clegg would win by miles because the Lib Dems are in a panic and are likely to pick the most Cameron/Blairesque candidate available and that's Clegg. Having seen both of them speak in person Huhne comes across much better in person than on tv - on tv he takes on the persona of something like John Kerry with a big head of dark greying hair, a large nose, answers that seem to go on forever in a deep voice but seem to be cut short. Clegg is not really great in person, he comes across as a guy who knows a very little about every topic on earth and strives to be seen as trendy, his answers flounder as when he was an MEP. When on tv where he only has to give soundbites it tends to come across well and "natural". Clegg did seem lightweight on Thursday, surprisingly. The other interesting thing about this contest is as there are few differences between the candidates people like Dimbleby are moving onto non-major policy areas where Clegg is more likely to have to blag his way through and Huhne has already got some answer tucked away. If they'd actually been talking about major policy areas I think Clegg would have come across much better.

[Chris Coles]

Huhne has shown himself to be unable to lead. leadership demands statesmanship. No one playing the tricks Huhne demonstrated Sunday morning, can ever call themselves any sort of a statesman. It is not a wonder that the Lib Dem's are in disarray if that is the underlying quality of of their front line briefing. To call his tactics childish is being lenient.

Clegg has one thing going for him, indeed, it is the one thing Huhne seems to find so annoying; he is prepared to re-think his strategy on the hoof. We have been plagued for many years now by individuals that take the "party line" and stick to it, come what may and never, for fear of the sort of immature attack Huhne delivered, ever have the courage to say, hey, last week I thought I knew all the answers, but now, upon reflection, I do not,.... and even, may have changed my mind. It takes real courage to declare that we are wrong from time to time and I for one feel that, given time to find his bearings, Clegg is, on that basis alone, by the far the better bet.

In passing, Julian Cox, you very obviously do not appear to understand the right of anyone else to not agree with your opinion. Freedom is acknowledging the rights of others to disagree with what you yourself believe.

[David Jackson]

I didnt catch Question time, though did catch the Politics show debate on Sunday.
As a Lib Dem I am fairly clear that our policies are there. I even heard Tories saying that we are not in favour of reducing taxes. Well, we are, but the next leader needs to be able to put across policies that have already been enunciated by Menzies, but not listened to.
I will be voting for Nick, for 2 reasons - firstly because he appears to be able to articulate the vision that I believe in and support and secondly given the opportunity by Menzies, Nick has been able to put himself across far better to the general public than Chris since the last leadership election. That gives a degree of confidence that he will improve his profile when elected.

[Julian Cox]

The fact that out of all the comments here, it is mine upon which Chris Coles deigns to comment with such a languid hand only proves my point - a Liberal Democrat, politically correct obsession with Israel that surpasses itself in ill-informed arrogance and espousing a commensurate ignorance of the facts, conflates Jews and Judaism with Israel and tolerates the unacceptable by way of vitriolic, emotive vilification. So much for the Enlightenment. And I receive a pompous, po-faced, sanctimonious reproach devoid of any substantive argument, calling ME intolerant? Quod erat demonstrandum.

Of course, not wishing to make a big thing of it – thus relegating the oldest hatred in the world to the inconvenience of mere historical trivia – it is glossed into Coles’s comments as a mere aside, “en passant”, a knobbly and incommodious bum-trinket on the thorny backside of life and representing the satisfaction of the “last word” as if his opinion were established fact, when, as the Chief Rabbi has commented in an essay entitled “We face a new kind of hatred” in the Jewish Chronicle only this week: “the new antisemitism focuses not on Judaism as a religion, nor on Jews as a race, but on Jews as a nation. It consists of three propositions. First, alone of the 192 nations making up the United Nations, Jews are not entitled to a state of their own. As Amos Oz noted: in the 1930s, antisemites declared, ‘Jews to Palestine’. Today they shout: ‘Jews out of Palestine’. He said: they don’t want us to be there; they don’t want us to be here; they don’t want us to be.”

He goes on: “The second [facet of the new antisemitism] is that Jews or the state of Israel (the terms are often used interchangeably) are responsible for the evils of the world, from Aids to global warming. All the old antisemitic myths have been recycled, from the Blood Libel to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, still a bestseller in many parts of the world. The third is that all Jews are Zionists and therefore legitimate objects of attack. The bomb attacks on synagogues in Istanbul and Djerba, the arson attacks on Jewish schools in Europe, and the almost fatal stabbing of a young yeshiva student on a bus in North London in October 2000, were on Jewish targets, not Israeli ones. The new antisemitism is an attack on Jews as a nation seeking to exist as a nation like every other on the face of the Earth, with rights of self-governance and self-defence.”

When Menzies Campbell carpeted Tonge, he did so because she stands accused of the above, in that she holds ALL British Jews responsible for Israel’s actions and deliberately, wilfully and purposefully conflates Jews with Israelis – but he did not have the courage to follow through. Despite a well-honed media persona purporting him to be an “expert” on foreign affairs, he could not demonstrate the moral courage to abandon his own prejudices, which Clegg and Huhne and the Liberal Democrats now must do if they are to be taken seriously as a third force in British politics and swill the slime from the bottom of their barrel. For whether Chris Coles likes it or not, it is equally just simply a fact that antisemtism is the barometer of prejudice in a society – and in Britain, we have such barrel-loads of it that it is going spare.

Turning now to another media-savvy Liberal Democrat who has crawled out of suburban anonymity all the way up the greasy poll without being elected to anything, Rabbi Baroness Julia Neugberger, president of the radical wing of Progressive Judaism in Britain, said in September 2006 in Berlin at the first rabbinical ordinations in Germany since the Holocaust that although born in London, she felt very much still a “German Jew”. I would remind her of the words of Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984):

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

Julia Neuberger IS a Jew. She is also a social democrat. Whose silence is deafening. Messrs Clegg and Huhne are Gentiles – and whichever of them wins this election, they must unite to condemn and to rid Liberal Democracy of Julia Tonge, who has no place in a democratic political party and who is a disgrace to British democracy.

The last word shall not be Chris Coles’s, the Chief Rabbi’s or even mine but that of Euripides: Qui tacet consentire vidatur – he who is silent gives consent.

[Chris Coles]

You have made my point for me Mr Cox. Get a life.

On a small point of order. By the far the greatest friend I ever had was a Jew. Ronald Bruce Margolin.

Sadly he passed on recently and he is greatly missed.

[Julian Cox]

A small point of order? And what small point would that be, Coles?

That antisemitic attacks are the worst in Britain since the 1930s as a direct result of politically correct and irresponsible Israel bashing all too fondly indulged in by Liberal Democrats?

That I should "get a life" when I already have one but whilst Jews in Europe and Israel are being killed as a result of the noxious and toxic views such as those espoused by Jenny Tonge and never condemned by Julia Neuberger?

That the collective wisdom of the likes of the Chief Rabbi and Pastor Niemöller are secondary to your unargued and bossy, offhand assertions?

Or that Jewish life is only to be cherished if it is the life of the right kind of Jew? The convenient Jew. The Jew who knows his place and will be put in it by the likes of you?

Tell us, please, we wait with baited breath... what small point of order would that be?

[david]

I turned it off..both candidates seem lightweight..It would seem that whoever wins it will make little difference..all things to all men.The next election will be fought between those who wish to see Labour ousted and those who wish to see them retained.Unless it is a tactical vote.. a vote for either would seem to be wasted vote.I kept getting a feeling that Clegg was related to Alistair Campbell..build..looks?

[Chris Coles]

As I understand it, Ronnie Margolin founded two separate firms of London Solicitors, helped found many successful businesses. Not the least, he was responsible for all those audio cassettes we could buy in a petrol station now many decades ago. Was the first person to introduce heart pacemakers into the UK and, in his prime, had an office address of 1 Lincolns Inn Fields. Mr Cox, you spout utter rubbish about fine individuals in politics and then denigrate a very fine man you never knew who, perhaps more than anything, was never put in his place by anyone. Shame on you. As within any religion, there are many fine Jews, many of whom, I feel sure, will not agree with every point of view you express. You do them all a disservice.

[Chris Coles]

All the problems of Israel seem to stem from a need for land upon which to found their nation. For some time now I have wondered why Israel continues to follow a path that brings it into conflict with others that claim to own the land they currently occupy, when, there is all the technology available to create new land from the sea. It would surely be easier to extend the borders of Israel out beyond the low water mark, than to continue to have to endure conflict?

Further, it is reasonable to suggest that everyone else that is, or has been affected by, the ongoing conflicts with her immediate neighbours would welcome a change in direction and support such a strategy. The long term result would be enough new land to permit the release from conflict of the existing land on the West Bank and the re-engagement of friendly discourse with the Arab world that surrounds them. The longer term result might be that, without conflict, the people of Israel and her supporters such as Mr. Cox might one day be able to stop feeling that the world is against them and thus realise their full potential as a peaceful nation. I for one would welcome that.

There is always another way to look at any problem, you simply have to look up from your troubles and see the potential of setting off in a new direction.

[Tom Papworth]

It's true what they say: you can't have any conversation on the internet without somebody eventually alluding to the Holocaust!

Perhaps, Julian, you might want to read some (any) of the Lib Dem's policies on the Israel-Palestine question, or note the condemnation at the last conference of the academic boycott of Israel, before sounding off from a point of ignorance.

Jenny Tonge is an idiot, and the only reason anybody listens to her is because it serves the BBC's agenda to get her onto Question Time rather than invite an elected MP or front bench spokesperson who actually represents the party, rather than merely being a member of it.

Tonge should be free to express her views, but as Herbert H. Humphrey noted, "The right to be heard does not autmatically include the right to be taken seriously."

[Bertie Johnston]

Hi Daniel

I completely agree with you that Chris Huhne came out best in the Question Time debate which, contrary to what you say, was a 'must' for anyone interested in politics in this country. However, last night on Newsnight when both were confronted by Jeremy Paxman there was no doubt that Nick Clegg came out strongest.

Clegg is not yet the finished article. In the LibDem party David Laws is a much better big occasion speaker and unlike Clegg speaks without notes. Clegg, on the other hand, has the charisma and will no doubt work hard to perfect his speech making and point making technique.

Just one point more. I think Jenny Tonge is great. It would be a tragedy if the radical thinkers like Tonge, Skinner and Hoey were ever driven out of politics

[Julian Cox]

Coles, I neither know who Margolin was, nor of his life's achievements. I have passed no comment upon him. But none. What relevance has a suburban solicitor to Jenny Tonge's repulsive attitude to 6 million of the world's Jews and the British Jewish community, to the Liberal Democrats jaundiced, prejudiced and institutionalized attitudes to same and to Julia Neuberger's impersonation of Kenneth Williams impersonating Edith Evans impersonating a dead sheep as she stares silently out at us from that ghastly photograph the Jewish Chronicle keeps assailing us with every time she courts further publicity – other, of course, than to condemn her fellow-Liberal Democrat Baroness Tonge? Spare us, please, the lachrymose schmaltz of your rebarbative some-of-my-best-friends-are-Jewish routine. Along with burlesque basques and the soft shoe shuffle, it went out of fashion a long time ago apart from wife swapping parties in Solihull (and, as rumour has it, Lincoln’s Inn). It also patronizes to the point of nausea. It is likewise a worn-out, threadbare and somewhat platitudinous rhetorical device most commonly employed by those who think it somehow excuses the stream of prejudicial ignorance that then flows freely from them. If the yarmulke fits, wear it.

I have, however, passed comment upon you and the Liberal Democrats. I have gone to some lengths to justify my position. If you wish simply to emote on the grounds that you find me – in vocabulary that my sister and Noël Coward would no doubt favour – “simply beastly” do so, but do justify, we implore you, your assertions that I besmirch these “fine individuals in politics”. Tell us what they have done to merit such laudatory penmanship on your part…

Is the outgoing Liberal Democrat leader, whose early retirement at 94¼ has precipitated this tidal wave in the affairs of men – no doubt to concentrate on his form in the forthcoming International Gurning Championships in Richmond, Yorkshire, against William Hague’s disproportionate grimacing – purportedly “fine” because of his past, repeated, insistent and “unfair” criticisms of the State of Israel? This is not my vocabulary of choice but yours – and that of Monroe Palmer, the “Chair” of the Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel (LDFI), who wrote to me opining that Menzies Campbell “has and will criticise the Israeli Government but I believe he has become more balanced in his views”. Observations of balance, of course, are dependent on a certain ab initio objectivity, but Campbell was busy criticizing the government of Israel when Israel’s Labour Party was in power; he continued to do so when the Likud was in office; and does so today, with Kadimah at the helm. He has therefore systematically disapproved from the dizzy heights of his self-appointed ethical superiority of every Israeli administration since the foundation of the modern Israeli state – from its War of Independence against the forces of no less than eight numerically superior and hostile Arab regimes to the present-day wave of terrorist atrocities at the hands of the same agencies that have struck in Britain – irrespective of its political colour, aspirations and actions. Given that Israel is a democracy and, moreover, one which elects its Members of Knesset by means of strict proportional representation – which his party seeks to impose on Britain – in one national electoral college, it would seem that he takes it upon himself to criticize each and every sitting Knesset member along with the entirety of the Israeli electorate. Some “balance”.

Of course, I wrote to Alan Beith (“Commode” of the LDFI), Gavin Stollar (its Vice “Fauteuil”), and Matthew Harris (its Louis XV “Secrétaire”) as well, but already burdened with the weight of the world’s woes, it was understandable that they could not to stoop any lower to afford me their views. More importantly, I also wrote to Simon Hughes, no less than “Tallboy” of the Parliamentary Party, telling him that there was some unwholesome and vociferous support of Tonge in the Hammersmith & Fulham Liberal Democrat constituency party only to be ignored – presumably his computer was too alternatively preoccupied to advise him he had “mail”. At this juncture, if any Liberal Democrats are floundering in want to find anything positive to say about the country at all, may I suggest that they remember that Israel is the one country in the Middle East where Simon Hughes can surf the net in nonchalant freedom and Nick Oaten would have been able so spectacularly to misbehave without summary arrest, arbitrary incarceration and the threat of being shot or hanged. Perhaps Campbell should have remembered that when he was trying to put both feet down the one leg of his foreign office brief.

When Jenny Tonge said, “The pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the western world, its financial grips. I think they've probably got a grip on our party,” Monroe Palmer advised me that this clearly had “connotations of antisemitsm but she wriggled out of it. If she makes such comments again she should not be so lucky”. The problem is that she has and nothing has happened. Her first outburst in sympathy with Palestinian terrorist suicide-bombers should have been enough to disqualify her of membership of the Liberal Democrats. Instead, Kennedy appointed her to the House of Lords when he was clearly in his cups and the pugnacious Tom McNally appointed her to the House of Lords – and upon Julia Neuberger’s departure, promoted her to front bench politics. She has since gone on to hold British Jews responsible for the actions of Israel and was given a platform at the party’s conference (not the BBC’s Question Time) to continue her tirades.

I am now advised that the right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously. My point is that Tonge should not be heard at all – on a Liberal Democrat platform. She has no place in a democratic party. Deprived of official sponsorship (and an expense account on my taxes), she would fade into deserved obscurity.

I am also somewhat glibly advised that it seems impossible in a discussion such as this for the Holocaust not to be mentioned. Too right. My doing so is not for the titillation of intellectual debate but that, as a victim of no less than 11 unprovoked antisemitic incidents on the streets of London since the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006 – two of which constituted physical assault – I am all too aware of how prejudicially irresponsible and inflammatory statements only fuel an already dangerous situation and one that is deteriorating rapidly in the worst outbreak of antisemitism since the 1930s. Not one comment has been made in this respect.

It is a silence unacceptable in those who lead and support one of Britain’s main political parties. Monroe Palmer tells me of Tonge that “I think the Jewish community and the media give her too much publicity. She is a nobody who unfortunately and unwisely Kennedy appointed to the Lords and who appears to love notoriety.” Now she is an “idiot”. Well, she is being remarkably successful as a “nobody” and an “idiot” as many a rabble rouser has historically been. Let us not forget that in 1922, most Germans would have called Adolf Hitler a rabble rouser and dismissed him out of hand.

And it is a silence on the part of Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger, in the face of such outrageous and contemptible discrimination and wilful perversity, that simply beggars belief. For a Jew who has built an entire career on the basis of social justice, her silence reduces the 30 years of her incessant natterings and prattlings on to nothing more than vacuous, flatulent cant.

I could not care less whether it is Clegg or Huhne who ends up leading this wheelie bin of disaffected malcontents and maverick egos. But I do care that they should make amends for Kennedy’s appalling judgement, Campbell’s abject ineptitude and McNally’s breathtaking irresponsibility and kick Jenny Tonge out of the party. That is the very least they can do.