Bernard Ingham: Why Clegg deserves better from his fractious and divided party faithful

Like David Cameron and Ed Miliband, Clegg leads a party split at least two ways. In his case, it is between old-fashioned Liberals, inclined to free markets and do-goodery, and a much more collectivist social democratic lot who would not be lost in the Labour Party whence some of them came.

Cameron presides over a party divided between the old patrician Tory types who fondly yearn for Disraeli’s one nation that Miliband now seeks and a much harder-edged majority of Conservative MPs who confusingly can be socially liberal while being tinder-dry economically. They are also seriously divided over Europe, with raging Europhiles confronting a majority of severe Eurosceptics who would give Ukip, the professional Eurosceptic party, a run for their money.

Miliband has somehow to manage a party split between the Marxist Left and the more pragmatic majority with an idealistic view of human nature that gets in the way of common sense. The unions, which gave birth to the party, were also sent to try him with their money and hunger for power – any old power so long as they are seen to be exercising it by throwing their weight about.

While I’m at it, I should perhaps complete my Martian’s guide to contemporary British politics. The Scottish and Welsh Nationalists are indistinguishable from Labour except that they are respectively wrapped in flags bearing the blue Saltire or fiery dragons or prosaic leeks. Both have the tiny Green Party’s expensively gullible green streak shot through them.

In Northern Ireland the politicians are split between unite-with-Ireland Republicans and diehard Unionists, with Republicans generally on the Left and the Unionists on the Right.

If you think you could manage any bit of that writhing mess of attitude, conviction, ambition, conspiracy theory, skulduggery and often treachery, you are a better man than me, Gunga Din.

It is perhaps indicative of the perennial atmosphere at Westminster that when, during the 1980s, I found blood on my shirt pocket, I exclaimed before the assembled lobby of political correspondents: “My God, I’ve been stabbed in the front.”

Which conveniently brings me back to Clegg. The poor beggar has been in danger of death from a thousand cuts from his own kind in the run-up to today’s conference address.

There is no point in saying this is unfair. Politics is never fair. But, as one who holds no brief for Clegg or his party of conveniently loose principles, I consider it to be entirely undeserved.

Clegg not merely led his party into government for the first time in nearly 100 years. He made sure they knew what they were letting themselves in for. Unlike Cameron, he cleared the formal coalition agreement with his membership. He is perhaps a better and wiser democrat – and superior manager of a democratic party – than his impulsive Prime Minister.

Second, having taken the plunge, he knew where his duty lay. It was to provide the nation with as stable a government as coalition could give it with a hung Parliament and a manifest financial and debt crisis around its neck. He did not run away from responsibility.

Taking all the compromises, rows, set-backs and tits-for-tat into account, he can reasonably claim that he has so far discharged his duty.

Third, within that responsibility, he correctly identified, with the old-fashioned Liberal blood coursing in his veins, the overriding need for financial discipline, sound money and the balancing of the nation’s books.

It may be taking longer than expected and will not be completed by 2015. But, like Chancellor George Osborne, Clegg has so far kept his nerve. That is something to be profoundly thankful for. We have a chance of getting back on an even keel by 2020.

The last thing I advocate from 2015 is another Con-Dem coalition – or any other coalition for that matter. Peacetime coalitions are not part of the British political DNA. But, whatever the polls say, Clegg has not let down his country or his party. Lib Dems should be man enough to recognise that at today’s conference.

Clegg might usefully ask the smaller of his party’s minds, such as Lord Oakeshott’s, what they are in business for. Power without responsibility – the privilege of the harlot through the ages?