Nick Clegg: The Rise and Fall

In general politicians or rather, Prime Minister's, tend to be remembered or become characterised by one and only one event.  Everything else they have done is laid to rest and quickly forgotten about.  Consider a recent example such as Tony Blair.  Blair helped to modernise the Labour Party, rebranding it as New Labour.  He effectively ended almost two decades of Conservative Government, by a landslide.  He played a large, if not crucial part in the Northern Ireland Peace Process.  But, was he remembered for any of this?  For many no, his political legacy was tarnished by his and Bush's "War on Terror".  In our age of communication it is so easy to become branded by one thing, and so it seems that the media have successfully impaled any of his other achievements.

Exactly the same thing has happened again.

I, like many others (mainly students), jumped on the Clegg band wagon.  He was a fresh new face in the world of politics and renewed some much needed faith in politicians, especially after the Expenses fiasco.  Clegg was placed on a high pedestal, and some even compared his rise to that of Obama's.  Clegg was passionate and believably honest.  His party was offering new and different things; namely, the abolition of tuition fees (given it was going to be over six years) and a review of our spending on Trident.

Clegg's promises were exciting, but more than this, he even pledged to keep his promises, and we believed him.  Take the following video for example:

However, it was not to be.  Soon after May 7th, the Liberal Democrats formed a coalition (and perhaps a new era in politics?) with the Conservatives.  Two parties, which are conventionally seen at opposite ends of the political spectrum, coming together in the "national interest".  But with power, came great sacrifice.  I won't argue with this as it is only right that the Conservatives are allowed to implement most of their policies; they did gain the majority of the votes after all.  At the time, I actually agreed with the decision.  Whether we liked it or not, the country was (is) in a recession, and we needed strong and stable government in order to progess.  A prolonged hung parliament would have only worsened the state of our economy.  I agreed with Nick.

This soon proved to be his downfall.  Very few of Clegg's main policies have been implemented, let alone considered.  As a student, it is obvious which policy I cared about most.  Tuition fees were the main reason for many of the Liberal Democrats votes, and the majority of these votes were from students.  However, I don't take issue with the fact Clegg couldn't honour this pledge.  To a certain extent, I understand it couldn't be done, because right now it's just not feasible when you look at the fragile state of our economy.  The point at which I do take issue is their decision to double the fees and in some cases triple them.  If they'd left the system alone, I wouldn't have a problem.

It's one thing to stall, but to do a U-turn of this magnitude is unbelievable, hypocritical and what's more, it's a broken promise.  Something I thought Nick Clegg was sick of?

In my opinion, this will be Clegg's short lived legacy.  Even though he was never Prime Minister, he will be remembered.  He'll be remembered as someone who hated broken promises, who campaigned for "fairness", and as someone who broke promises and helped to implement policies that had a distinct feeling of "unfairness" about them.

And yet, I can't help but sympathise.  It seems as if he is being made into a shield to protect a Government that he doesn't fully believe in.  He said he would help the Conservatives, in order to serve the country and get us out of a recession as quickly as possible, and that is what he has done.  Forgivable?  I'm not sure.  I guess the real question is: How far down the garden path is Clegg willing to go?