Dermot: Okay listen. Just to give people at home who are first time voters this election round, er sort of a taste of where you come from. What about you, you were a first time voter in '87. what inspired you? Presumably you voted Liberal in '87?
Clegg: Yeah I've always - I'm just trying to think um.
Dermot: Just clear that up, you have always voted Liberal?
Clegg: I've always voted Liberal, absolutely. Um.
Dermot: What was it in '87 that inspired you to vote?
Clegg: Well you’ve got to remember I was at university then and it was very much sort of the height of the Thatcher revolution and I - god I don't remember that much. Um but about my student days but I do remember, like a lot of people my generation. I'm 43. that this whole vision that Thatcher had at the time, the Conservative Party had at the time, of you know there's no such thing as society, it was dog eat dog......I found that very kind of very off putting indeed. I also found the whole, this whole stuff about you know let's pull up the drawbridge, turn our back on the outside world. That didn’t appeal to me at all, so I was very naturally drawn to the Lib Dems.
Sounds to me as if Mr Clegg voted for La Thatch in 1987. Bet that will go down well with the sandal wearing tendency in the LibDems.
Hattip to Paul Waugh
Seems pretty clear that he didn't. What interview transcript are you reading?
ReplyDeleteI don't really see how you've made that connection Iain...! What are you basing that on exactly? A few "um"s in there? A little on the desperate side.
ReplyDeleteRichmond Council have just delivered a letter and flyer from Susan Kramer together with our Official Polling Cards. Is that allowed?
ReplyDeleteIain, I can't quite see how you've ended up at that conclusion! Am I missing something?
ReplyDeleteWhy the hell can't he just be honest about it? Voters are aware of the fact that people can change their views...
ReplyDeleteIain, what are you talking about? He says he was put off by Thatcher's "there's no such thing as society" philosophy. Leaving aside whether she actually said that he is confirming that he always voted Liberal. Unless you are calling him a liar, how can you possibly infer that he voted Tory? Is it because he says "um" a few times?
ReplyDeleteTake a deep breath Iain, give yourself a couple of hours break then re-read what you have written today. Your desperation is getting just a little bit embarrassing. Show some dignity man.
another very lame attempt , Iain! this is getting silly now. Is this ALL you can come up with in the middle of the most intense general election for decades?
ReplyDeletehehheee it must be a case of paralysis by analysis for wee Iain.
Why aren't you talking about things that really matter?! By the way I love that new website 'DON'T JUDGE MY FAMILY'. have you checked it out?
Good for him, if it's true. Me too - was a Tory party activist (on Tyneside) in '87 as a teenager...and voted tory, up to and including '97.
ReplyDeleteI changed, as I grew up AND the Tory Party changed and became nastier.
Btw my sandals are very fetching...thank you very much. lol
To be fair Churchill (the only politician with a stature comparable to Clegg) switched his political allegiance (only the othe way round).
ReplyDeleteSurely shome mistake!
ReplyDelete"The clearest enunciation yet of how the LibDems will decide who to back came after Mr Clegg declared his admiration for Margaret Thatcher."
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1257048/Nick-Clegg-outlines-LibDem-terms-election-ends-hung-Parliament.html#ixzz0leVPRsj3
I voted for Tony Blair in 1997. Loads of members of all parties will have voted all sorts of ways in the past. What's your point?
ReplyDeleteMuch more likely, he voted SDP in 1987 and was trying to work out how to explain the Alliance.
ReplyDeleteIain
ReplyDeleteA phrase including the words "Straws" and "Clutching" springs to mind in respect of your blog...!
I don't know where in June 1987 Cleggie got that quote about there being no such thing as society from. The relevant quote wasn't published until 31st October that year.
ReplyDeleteI think it's much more likely that his doubt was because he voted SDP in 1987 (remember, that was the last year of the Alliance) and he was trying to decide whether to explain that or not.
ReplyDeleteCould the Lib-Dems work with the Conservatives and in the process destroy Labour?
ReplyDeleteA new political landscape Conservative Lib-Dem would be a lot more attractive than the present one.
Cameron should come out with this line at the nest debate "I've met Barack Obama and you, Nick, are no Barack Obama"...
ReplyDeleteYou'll have to go out and buy more straws to clutch, Iain, at this rate. This is absurd. He doesn't say that. And, frankly what would it prove if he did?
ReplyDeleteCan every member of the shadow cabinet confirm that they have always voted Tory in every election? Or the Cabinet, voted Labour? At least two members of the Cabinet - Hain and Adonis - must have voted Liberal or Alliance in the past. So what?
Oh dear Iain. This is truly desperate stuff.
ReplyDeleteif this is the stuff CCHQ are sending you then they really are up a creek without a paddle.
Even if you're right, and the transcript doesn't support it, I completely fail to see your point.
ReplyDeleteLots of people voted differently when they first voted (in this case almost a quarter of a century ago) than they do now. So what?
Clegg's right - you people are just getting increasingly desperate. I preferred it when you had writer's block rather than your current verbal diarrhoea!
Iain, by what stretch of the imagination did he even hint he voted Conservative?! I know you're in full-on election mode but this is just delusional.
ReplyDeleteIain
ReplyDeleteThere was a very interesting exchange between Eddie Mair on the PM prog at about 5.14 to 5.21 today.
Brown had said yesterday that "WE" had provided 100+ coaches in Madrid to facilitate his "Madrid Hub" plan.
Guess what? There are no coaches there now. They are only just leaving the UK this evening. ie at least another 24 hours away.
This storey sums up what a bunch of @@@@s this government is. More concerned with news management than actually helping anyone. THEY are in power telling people on BBC World to make there way to Madrid, whilst the British Embassy there is advising that they should not go because there are no cheap facilities to shift them.
What the hell is the government doing, intervening to make a bad situation worse, just to grab a sound bite?
SCANDALOUS
soon to be on iplayer at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00rzvgl/PM_20_04_2010/
Academic year '86-'87 he was in Arch and Anth, and at Robinson. Not your hotbeds of leftishness, either of them. Who is the N. Clegg, Robinson, in the CUCA lists for '86-'87?
ReplyDeleteIf it is him, voting SDP/Liberal for Shirley Williams rather than for the outstanding sitting Conservative Robert Rhodes James would be incoherent, shall we say kindly.
Of course he may have not voted - May Week, lots going on, can't remember much about it - people often can't.
I’m not surprised Mr Clegg is unsure as to whether he voted Conservative or not in 1987, he didn’t
ReplyDeleteseem to be too sure who he really was in last Thursday’s Televised Leader’s debate.
Nick Clegg tried to pass himself off as a typical Yorkshireman, speaking passionately of ‘my city of Sheffield’ in Thursday’s ground breaking television, Leaders debate.
As someone who comes from God’s own County, I can tell you Mr Clegg is no Yorkshireman!
Despite his apparent down to earth name, Nick Clegg is the son of a Dutch mother and a half-Russian merchant banker father. He spent his childhood living in a Buckinghamshire Mansion, which he himself, has described in more candid moments as “affluent”. Companies House records indicate that his father Nicholas, who also owns a twenty room chalet in the Alps and a Chateau near Bordeaux, is the Chairman of The United Trust Bank which specialises in financing property developers, the sort of risky lending Vince Cable says he wants to curb. ‘Yorkshire Nick’ enjoyed the privilege of a Public School education at the £30,000 per year Westminster School. As a boarder there, his fag was none other than TV’s Louis Theroux. Clegg doesn’t deny it, he just uses the old political chestnut of saying ‘I have no recollection of being woken by Louis Theroux‘, one of Mr Theroux’s stated duties as Mr Clegg‘s fag.
Clegg went on from there to study Social Anthropology at Robinson College, Cambridge, where it is rumoured he joined the Cambridge University Conservative Association, but he claims it was a matter of mistaken identity. A staunch Europhile, Mr Clegg went on to study at the College d’Europe in Bruges from where he went on to find employment with ex-Tory Minister Leon Brittan, who was the European Commissioner for Trade at the time. It is widely reported that Mr Clegg also had a stint working as a lobbyist for GJW between 1992 and 1994.
I’m pleased that Mr Clegg has experienced such good fortune in life so far, but he shouldn’t try to pretend to be an ordinary down to earth Sheffield lad. Such behaviour is a betrayal of his own family heritage, and an insult to the intelligence of the wider electorate and all genuine Yorkshire men and women.
Mr Clegg’s actions in this matter are inconsistent with his claim to be the only leader who is being straight with the voters.
I’m not surprised Mr Clegg is unsure as to whether he voted Conservative or not in 1987, he didn’t
ReplyDeleteseem to be too sure who he really was in last Thursday’s televised leader’s debate.
Nick Clegg tried to pass himself off as a typical Yorkshireman, speaking passionately of ‘my city of Sheffield'.
As someone who comes from God’s own County, I can tell you Mr Clegg is no Yorkshireman!
Despite his apparent down to earth name, Nick Clegg is the son of a Dutch mother and a half-Russian merchant banker father. He spent his childhood living in a Buckinghamshire Mansion, which he himself, has described in more candid moments as “affluent”. Companies House records indicate that his father Nicholas, who also owns a twenty room chalet in the Alps and a Chateau near Bordeaux, is the Chairman of The United Trust Bank which specialises in financing property developers, the sort of risky lending Vince Cable says he wants to curb. ‘Yorkshire Nick’ enjoyed the privilege of a Public School education at the £30,000 per year Westminster School. As a boarder there, his fag was none other than TV’s Louis Theroux. Clegg doesn’t deny it, he just uses the old political chestnut of saying ‘I have no recollection of being woken by Louis Theroux‘, one of Mr Theroux’s stated duties as Mr Clegg‘s fag.
Clegg went on from there to study Social Anthropology at Robinson College, Cambridge, where it is rumoured he joined the Cambridge University Conservative Association, but he claims it was a matter of mistaken identity.
A staunch Europhile, Mr Clegg went on to study at the College d’Europe in Bruges from where he went on to find employment with ex-Tory Minister Leon Brittan, who was the European Commissioner for Trade at the time. It is widely reported that Mr Clegg also had a stint working as a lobbyist for GJW between 1992 and 1994.
I’m pleased that Mr Clegg has experienced such good fortune in life so far, but he shouldn’t try to pretend to be an ordinary down to earth Sheffield lad. Such behaviour is a betrayal of his own family heritage, and an insult to the intelligence of the wider electorate and all genuine Yorkshire men and women.
Mr Clegg’s actions in this matter are inconsistent with his claim to be the only leader who is being straight with the voters.
Um?
ReplyDeleteWhat's this about Iain?
If it's meant to be an attack on the LibDems - it's pretty desperate. LOL
Are their policies SO good that you can't find anything to criticise there and have to resort to attacking "I agree with Nick"?
What's not to love about introducing PR?
We get to have a REAL democracy with the added bonus of "No more Safe Seats"
Dear Norfolk Blogger - as the post says its Paul Waugh of the Evening Standard who raises the issue and points out that Clegg was in the University Conservative Association. If Clegg voted LibDem then his disingenuousness began at an early age.
ReplyDeleteSo its you who are pretty desperate in trying to cast bogus aspersions.
But should we not expect dissembling from a man who as an MEP charged the EU for Business Class and travelled Economy? Its bad enough he has only a tenuous link to truth and morality, its worse when he lectures us on how noble and different he is.
I see according to Guido (notice the hat tip Mr Blogger) that the disgraced Lord Reynard is still sniffing around the LibDems. Amazing when if you base LibDem actions on what Clegg has said then Renard should have had the whip withdrawn.
So much for the LibDems being above such things.
I don't understand why you think it sounds like he voted for Thatcher. Which bit suggests that?
ReplyDeleteHow characteristic that the Liberal Democrat supporters rush in when Iain Dale makes a light hearted comment about Clegg seemingly being uncertain how he voted in the Eighties.
ReplyDeleteThey seem to have a (mental) age of about 12.
Did they not notice that Iain quoted the text and let us make up are own minds?
Do they believe that Iain thinks it is a crime to have ever supported the Conservatives?
Where is the Liberal Democrat engagement with policies (if they can remember any) or their reflections on (for example) why the Big Society is wrong, or why a majority of Liberal Democrats prefer to prop up a Brown goverment than have a new Cameron government? Where is the passion and moral engagement?
You expect airhead comments from Canvas (Iain Dale you have put on weight is about her level) but I cannot recall a single comment by any of the Liberal Democrat supporters in these pages since Thursday that have displayed anything more substantive than "Woo hoo we are up in the polls!"
No wonder Liberal Democrat politicians give the appearance of being lightweight narcissists - they are simply reflecting their core vote!
The Lib Dem supporters on here give the impression that if Nick Clegg promised to abolish death (although not taxes of course) in the lifetime of the next parliament they would believe it.
With today's Lib Dem policies, Clegg would have voted for old "Duffle Coat" Foot in 1983, had he been old enough
ReplyDeleteWasn't Clegg pretending to be a Conservative then? Was it to get a job under Leon Brittan in EC? This shows that he was then really a closet Libdem pretending to be something which in fact he was not-typical Libdem mind set, like now pretending for change but actually ready to join Brown in a Libdem-Lab pactct, despite that Old Labourite Cable lying today about it-again typical Libdem mind set: say one thing but think another!
ReplyDelete"Bet that will go down well with the sandal wearing tendency in the LibDems"
ReplyDeleteEven if it's true, given what he's done to the opinion polls, I suspect the grassroots might forgive him this once!