Murnaghan Interview with Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat leader, 26.04.15

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well now to the general election campaign and what a difference five years makes.  At this time in the last election cycle everyone seemed to agree with Nick but if the polls are to be believed, now the Liberal Democrats could face losing more than half their seats.  Well I spoke to Nick Clegg on Friday about the future of his party, his role within it and the Wizard of Oz.  
Well Mr Clegg, very good to see you, thank you very much indeed for joining us, let’s compare and contrast the campaign with 2010, are you frustrated that the Liberal Democrats as a party are not really cutting through at all this time?

NICK CLEGG: Well I would be if that characterisation was fair but actually I think what is happening, for all the political parties nothing is much sort of moving in the national opinion polls but these national opinion snapshots don’t really tell you what is going on in the communities and in the constituencies and in the villages and the towns and the cities where elections are being ferociously fought between the political parties and there I think there is quite a lot of movement actually and far from being downhearted I am actually buoyed up because my experience and that’s certainly what we’re feeling across the country, is that where we get our message across – I don’t whinge about but no one tells our story for us, we have to do it for ourselves and where we do that, in communities where we are present in people’s lives, we are getting a really good reception.

DM: But what about personally, don’t you think back five years and look at things like this Milifandom and think five years ago that was me, I was more popular than Winston Churchill according to one of the polls and now I’m about as popular as Katie Hopkins.

NICK CLEGG: That’s a new comparison!  I didn’t think then and I don’t think now that you should ever go into politics as some sort of beauty contest.  I know it sounds a bit po-faced but I genuinely thinks you should go into politics if you have got ideas and values that you really believe in and if you want to try and do the right thing for your country.  Look, politics is a rough old business and you shouldn’t go into it if you just want people to throw you bouquets and compliments and particularly, and this is not just here in the United Kingdom but across the developed world in the wake of the terrible crash in 2008, anyone in government has had to take some really difficult decisions and that courts controversy and courts unpopularity but do I think it was the right thing for us to step up to the plate five years ago?  You bet, in fact I feel it more now than I even did then because I can now see we did the right thing for the country.

DM: Now you are very frankly talking about coalition, I remember talking to your predecessors as leaders in general elections and they always had to preface it with our aim is to take over all power but you can say with the Liberal Democrats that’s not going to happen, so you are talking about coalition again and I want to take you back to that manifesto launch when you talked very interestingly, a kind of Wizard of Oz analogy when you talked about bringing a heart to the Conservatives and a brain to the Labour party.  Now heart to the Conservatives, aren’t you meant to have been doing that for that last five years and brain for the Labour party, are you saying they are a bit thick?

NICK CLEGG: I think they have lost their head when it comes to the economy.

DM: But they’re stupid?

NICK CLEGG: I think when it comes to their absolute bone-headed refusal to apologise for presiding over a crashed economy, when they don’t apologise for the fact that they left no money as Liam Byrne’s note finally said, they blamed us for every single decision that we’ve taken to try and clear up the mess.  Yes, I think I am entitled to say after five years of constant, constant bile from the Labour party who have condemned us vitriolically for taking decisions which we only had to take because we had to clear up the mess they left behind, I think it is right to say that if we were ever in coalition with the Labour party we would make sure that that Labour party wouldn’t mess things up again and wouldn’t waste people’s money.

DM: It sounds a bit personal.

NICK CLEGG: It’s not personal …

DM: But you are very angry aren’t you?  

NICK CLEGG: I am really angry actually that the Labour party, who presided over the biggest economic crash certainly since the oil crash in the early 1970s, arguably since the Second World War, which has cost millions of people a real hit to their livelihoods, that they should now refuse to accept any responsibility for what happened in 2008, no apologise – I’ve had to apologise for things I haven’t been able to do, have you heard even a hint of an apology from Ed Balls or Ed Miliband.  They were in the government that promised an end to boom and bust so what I am saying is yes, you bet, we would provide the economic brain that the Labour party appear to have left behind them.  

DM: But does this feed into any coalition negotiations?  We know you have selected your team, I presume early contacts have taken place, does this  then mean …  

NICK CLEGG: No.  

DM: Okay, they haven’t taken place but when they do take place, if they do take place, with the Labour party is this one of the preconditions, apologise and accept what you did?

NICK CLEGG: Well listen, they are going to have to decide whether they apologise or not, I can’t really force them on that but what I can do, and what I can say and that is reflected in the first line of our top priority on the front page of our manifesto, is that the Liberal Democrats will balance the books because you’ve got to balance the books because this is what Labour doesn’t appear to understand.  There’s nothing remotely progressive or fair in saying our kids or our grandkids should pick up the price of this generation’s mistakes, should pick up the tab for the mistakes of the bankers.  What’s fair about that?

DM: You characterised it in these Wizard of Oz terms so you have got the heartless Tin Man of the Conservatives, the brainless scarecrow from the Labour party, of course there were two others on that Yellow Brick Road, there was Dorothy who it turned out was having some kind of hallucinogenic dream and the lion that had no courage, so which one is the Liberal Democrats?

NICK CLEGG: We’re a lion with courage.  There you go, a slight adaptation to the story.  

DM: You are not the Wizard of Oz then pretending to be more powerful than you are?   

NICK CLEGG: No, no, no!  Look, listen, joking aside, I do actually think that politics much as in life is a bit of a balance between head and heart, of course it is and that’s what we face as a country.   The big question in this election campaign, you know we’re tantalisingly close to wiping the slate clean for the next generation to free them of the debts of this generation so why on earth would you string it out like the Labour party want?  They actually want more years of austerity than we do, we say let’s bring austerity to an end in 2017/18 but bring it to an end fairly.

DM: Well let’s examine in more detail who and how you could work with?  First of all is your ambition as the Liberal Democrats to go into a formal coalition?  Your activists and you’ll have heard them say we need time out of government to refresh.  We may have an influence on the country depending on the way the cards fall, we can vote accordingly but perhaps we don’t need to be back formally in government.

NICK CLEGG: Well of course we can have that debate but do I speak for the country and I’ll come to the Liberal Democrats in a minute but I do think, I know it’s not a fashionable thing to say but it is worth sometimes putting your country before party.  Do I think it is better for the country to have a government that can actually govern?  Well of course I do.  This is the problem with all these exotic other arrangements, deals, pacts, confidence and supply and all the rest of it, they are all deeply unstable and all they actually amount to is basically saying is in the case of if there is a left wing alliance, well you put Ed Miliband rather haplessly into Number Ten without a majority and Alex Salmond basically decides whether the life support system is switched on or off.  The other scenario is you put David Cameron rather haplessly into Number Ten at the beck and call of Nigel Farage.  I think both those scenarios are an absolute nightmare because you’d have night after night after night of unstable votes in the House of Commons, no one would know exactly what the government is doing.  I think we’ve proved despite all the scepticism that greeted the creation of this coalition five years ago, we have proved that coalition government can work, can stay the course and can be effective.  

DM: So would you have failed, Mr Clegg, if you don’t get into government, if you don’t get your party into government, would you stay on as leader?

NICK CLEGG: Look, I have got bags of energy, I am really optimistic about the prospects of the Liberal Democrats, of course I want to continue to serve my country and serve the party which I am so proud to have served for seven, eight years now and of course the more Liberal Democrat MPs that are elected, the greater the likelihood that our country can continue to …

DM: But if you go back into opposition would you stand down?   

NICK CLEGG: Well look, I want to carry on leading my party and I want to lead the Liberal Democrats into parliament first with a sizeable good significant number of Liberal Democrat MPs and …

DM: Well about winning your own seat, we won’t examine that one …

NICK CLEGG: Well I’ll do that.  

DM: Okay but if you are in opposition, that’s out of your hands really, that’s in the electorates hands of course and there could be an outright majority, there could be a different coalition, but that leaves the Lib Dems out, would you see any point in staying on leading the Lib Dems?

NICK CLEGG: Look, I want to lead the Liberal Democrats into and through the next parliament in all circumstances, it is one of the greatest privileges of my political life. At some point of course, all political careers come to an end at some point and it will come to an end and other people will come forward but all I am focused on at the moment is sounding the alarm about the very, very real risk that as the Labour party and the Conservative party vacate the centre ground and hare off in one direction after another, as opposed to another, there is a very, very real risk that we undo all the sacrifices and hard work that has gone into the last five years to put the country back on track economically.

DM: We talk about political careers ending, we know Mr Cameron’s political career could be ending pretty soon if he loses or in a few years’ time, he’s told us that.  We have never really found out how the coalition ended, what was your relationship like with Mr Cameron when you said goodbye to each other, what happened there, a straightforward professional handshake?  We know how close you were when it all started, so a handshake or what?

NICK CLEGG: Look, I think, I’ll do something unusual in an election campaign and I’ll give credit to another party leader.  I give credit to David Cameron that he and I put our party differences aside for the benefit of the country as a whole.  I strongly disagree with a lot of the things that David Cameron and George Osborne wanted to do if they were on their own and have now declared they would do if they were on their own, particularly their very unfair approach to balancing the books on the backs of the working age poor and not asking anything more of the very wealthy in society as we continue to balance the books.  

DM: So you could work with Mr Cameron again?

NICK CLEGG: Look I have been very open about the fact, I’d love to sit here and tell you in the time honoured fashion that I think I’m going to be Prime Minister, I’m not going to pretend I am, alas I don’t think that’s an impending likelihood.  I actually as it happens don’t think that David Cameron or Ed Miliband are going to be Prime Ministers in their own right either.  They won’t admit that to you so the question is, not really is David Cameron or Ed Miliband going to be in Number Ten, one of them will do but it is who is going to be there alongside them and I just shudder at the thought of Ed Miliband basically in Alex Salmond’s pocket or David Cameron basically being held hostage by the right wing of his own party and Nigel Farage.  I just think it is a lot better for the country, never mind the Lib Dems, it is much better for the country that we continue to anchor the country in the centre ground.

DM: What about voting reform, very dear of course to the Liberal Democrats, would that be back on the table with anyone you talked to about a coalition?

NICK CLEGG: Look, I would dearly like to see voting reform and I think in this election campaign if anyone needed any confirmation about how lopsided our election arrangement is, just look at the vast swathes of the country where politicians are barely bothering to talk to voters because there isn’t a meaningful contest in a whole bunch of constituencies and all of us are only devoting our attention to a relatively small number of constituencies.  It’s just not a fair balanced system so of course I’d like to make the case but I have to acknowledge that we put this to a referendum back in 2011, it wasn’t successful and I’m not like Nicola Sturgeon, I’d love that referendum to have gone the other way but I’m not like the SNP who basically say that because they didn’t get the right answer the first time they are going to ask people over and over and over again every second Tuesday before they get the right answer.

DM: The last question about the nature of the campaign, you talked about for the Lib Dems you are fighting street by street, house by house, certainly constituency by constituency, those are the sort of skills that would suit a seasoned campaigner like Lord Rennard, is he involved in any way, shape or form with any element of the Lib Dem campaign?

NICK CLEGG: Well he is absolutely not in any shape or form providing advice to me in terms of the campaign, no, not to me.  

DM: But is he even putting leaflets through doors?  

NICK CLEGG: It’s a free country and he’s a Liberal Democrat and he is perfectly entitled to do whatever he wishes in his own time but he is … .

DM: Presumably you know, do you know if he is working for the Liberal Democrats?

NICK CLEGG: I assume, I mean he is a Liberal Democrat peer so, dare I say it I don’t know what the 45,000 odd Liberal Democrat members are doing in every part of the country, I do know who I have asked to provide a formal role in formal positions in our election campaign and Lord Rennard does not count amongst those people.

DM: So he’s not at the centre but he could be working on a constituency basis?  

NICK CLEGG: It’s a free country and he’s a Liberal Democrat peer so he is entirely free to do what he wishes in his own time but he is not in any formal capacity providing advice to me about how to run the election campaign.

DM: Deputy Prime Minister, thank you very much.  

NICK CLEGG: Thank you.  

DM:  Nick Clegg there, talking to me on Friday.