Ashdown praises Clegg as best party leader in 100 years

Speaking at a fringe event at the Liberal Democrat autumn conference yesterday, Lord Ashdown described Mr Clegg as “the best leader we’ve had in 100 years” and called on his party to unite behind him despite its poll rating collapse.

The Lib Dem peer criticised the decision to make the tuition free pledge before the 2010 election, for which Mr Clegg apologised last week, suggesting it was the kind of promise a party makes when it is not expecting to enter Government.

“Who can be surprised if, after 100 years out of government, we were a little opportunistic?” he asked.

Lord Ashdown said with both Labour and the Conservatives committed to hiking tuition fees, the Lib Dems knew they would only be able to keep its pledge if they won an outright majority.

But he added: “We knew there wasn’t going to be a majority... in coalition it wasn’t something we were going to deliver on. The opportunism was to make more of that promise, because we 
knew we were heading for a coalition.”

However, Lord Ashdown, who led the party for more than a decade to 1999, praised Mr Clegg for his “extraordinary grace under fire” as deputy prime minister.

The Sheffield Hallam MP is under pressure from within his own party as it continues to flounder in the polls, with deputy leader Vince Cable consistently more popular in polls of party members and the wider public.

But Lord Ashdown told delegates the party could recover if it maintained its “discipline” over the second half of its term in coalition government.