@ Georgia

Whne I was a Lib Dem councillor in coalition with Labour we didn’t get many compants about coalition from that side. Being called a Tory now just makes a change from being called socialist then. Neither is/was true.

Clegg regrets appearing to have ever had any principles

The LibDems are treating the entire population like imbeciles.

One thing would be “we can’t abolish tuition fees at the moment. We have to tighten the belt”.

Another is to go from promising £0 per student to £9000 in the space of a few months!

So either :
a) Nick Clegg was talking out of his arse and been wholly incompetent and inept in May 2010, just signing bits of paper for the obvious sake of students’ votes, or:
b) He has no principles whatsoever and he’s ready to perform radical u-turns at the drop of a hat.

Either way, it’s an insult to the electorate.

To constantly repeat that “we had no idea of the scale of the ‘black hole’”, when in May the whole campaign was about the scale of the deficit is, simply, to lie.

Between May and October they did not discover figures so radically different that could justify switching from a pledge of £0 per student to £9000…

“Nick Clegg today told ITV’s Daybreak programme [...]”

If a politician goes on television but there’s no-one around to watch it, does he make a sound?

I imagine tens of thousands of students “regret” voting for Clegg’s party in May. Unfortunately for them, it’s not possible for them to change their votes like Clegg changes his principles.

See my blog on the subject…

http://anthonytrew.blogspot.com/2010/11/tuition-fees-protests-hope-sinks.html

Nick Clegg has made the Liberals unelectable. Their position in the polls is tumbling everyday. Who can trust them ever gain? They gave the hated Tories a mandate to rule and to impose an economic idealogical experiment on the mass of the population all for a sniff of power.

And what about that fat double chinned red haired Liberal rodent who sits and nods on demand for the Tories? What a spineless parasite of an individual. Throwing out his political principles with the bathwater and playing Heydrich to Clegg’s Eichmann. I only hope there is a British equivalent of the Nuremberg trials for those two when the extent of the damage caused by their collaborative efforts are finally accounted for.

The hypocracy form Labour on this is pretty smelly. From the tone of comments here and elsewhere you would have thought Labour, while in Government and in the election campaign reduced/abolished student fees and/or promised to do so, and had nothing to do with Lor Browne’s report.

The truth is, of course, that the Labour Government maintained and increased fees, and commissioned Borne’s report, sertting its frame of reference.

By all means attack Lib Dems for a broken promise: that is entirely legitimate. But a more honest and self consistant way of describing the underlying politics is probably something like:

“Now you niave Lib Dems have discoverd the reality of power you understand you can’t make foolish promises. We are so glad you have at last come round to our understaning that student tuition fees are inevitable and bound to increase.

TW

@tw

That may be true, but surely Labour are quite justified in pointing out that the Lib Dems have picked up many left-leaning student votes in the last two elections (and seats in student towns) from Labour by pretending they a) rejected the principle of private contributions to higher education; b) would abolish the existing fees.

8 TW

“We are so glad you have at last come round to our understaning that student tuition fees are inevitable and bound to increase”

Well, er ..no… they really aren’t inevitable, any more than the formation of the NHS was inevitable, or the nationalisation and de-nationalisation of major industries was. Like anything else in policy terms, it’s about how you allocate scarce resources; there are nay number of ways you could “protect” this area.

As has been discussed elsewhere on LC and outside in the media, most other EU states don’t have tuition fees, so it’s hardly outwith the ken of man is it?

There are plenty of areas of spending I’d prefer to see cut before agreeing this was the correct policy, still less that the LibDems were justified in jettisoning their principles with such alacrity.

History I fear will be very harsh on them, and rightly so. The only real upside will be if they manage to help bring about the death of the FPTP electoral system.

As for the rest, I hope they end up in the dustbin of history with the nauseating New Labour experiment.

Clegg arch libercrite!

Is it possible to pressure Clegg to change his mind on Tuition fees?
Petition: Nick Clegg should honour Liberal pledges on Student Tuition Fees
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/40657.html
Nick Clegg should honour Liberal pledges on Student Tuition Fees Petition
Is it too late?