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Richmond upon Thames Liberal Democrats:Covering the constituencies of Twickenham and Richmond Park |
Forget AV – Nick Clegg is winning the big battle
May 5, 2011 11:04 AM
• [May 04] Benedict Brogan writes: NICK Clegg is a loser, and by tomorrow night we should know by how much. The polls seem confident that AV will be defeated, and that the Liberal Democrats will suffer a battering in the local elections and in Scotland in particular. His front-bench team is in turmoil as his rivals jockey for position in the party and around the Cabinet table. The voters will have delivered a resounding raspberry to his pet constitutional project. The weekend does not look promising for the Deputy Prime Minister.
. . Yet those same Tories should worry that while Mr Clegg looks like a loser in public, he is actually winning the policy debate: in the most fundamental areas of his programme, Mr Cameron shows every sign of surrendering to the Lib Dems. On public service reform, the Prime Minister is backing away from the idea of ending once and for all the state's monopoly as a provider, a vision he set out in this newspaper less than three months ago. A leaked note from the Confederation of British Industry on Tuesday gave a hint of the increasingly acrimonious battle that is raging. It revealed that Francis Maude, minister for the Cabinet Office and one of the true radicals of the administration, has concluded that wholesale outsourcing of services to the private sector is now politically "unpalatable".
. . All revolutions need a leader: so those who complain that this one has stalled must look to Mr Cameron to bear responsibility. Some say it is because he is distracted by bigger issues, principally Libya and Pakistan. Or it may be that he sees a bigger picture, one that tells him even this most radical of administrations can be too radical, and needs to trim its sails to deal with the prevailing weather. But a worrying divide is opening among senior Conservatives, between those who want to be radical at all costs and those who want to win at all costs. We won't notice tomorrow, but the one who appears to be winning as a result is Nick Clegg.
• Forget AV - Nick Clegg is winning the big battle [Benedict Brogan, Telegraph, May 04]
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