Letter: Cameron-Clegg agreement was like same-sex marriage

Stephen Bush is right in his Inside Politics piece “An anatomy of Liberal Democrats’ contested strategy” (FT.com, May 21) to say that the collapse in the Lib Dem vote share followed immediately after the formation of the coalition with the Conservatives in 2010.

Before 1997, Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown had asked me to speak to our European sister parties about how they handled coalition. Their advice was clear, although not necessarily what Ashdown wanted to hear as he hoped for a coalition with Blair. Distinctiveness and differentiation from the main coalition partner was seen as absolutely essential for the survival of the junior partner.

Lib Dems in Scotland, Wales and in local government also had successful experience of coalition. But Nick Clegg, who became Lib Dem leader in 2007, launched the coalition with David Cameron’s Conservatives in the Downing Street rose garden as though it was a same-sex marriage some years before the coalition successfully made such events possible. Many of us disagreed with Clegg’s view there shouldn’t be a cigarette paper between Lib Dems and Conservatives in government.

Before the 2010 election, I tried to help Clegg move the party to a position supporting a graduate tax. A major reason this failed was that those around him had been briefing that he simply wanted to scrap the free tuition fees policy. They let this be known immediately prior to the elections for the Lib Dem’s federal policy committee. A slate of candidates was therefore elected with a solid commitment to retain the “scrap tuition fees” policy. When it came to government, the Lib Dems accepted a portfolio including higher education. An offer from the Conservatives to help Clegg by letting our MPs abstain, as provided for in the coalition agreement, was rejected. We still had 57 MPs and they split almost exactly three ways on the issue.

Lord Rennard
Liberal Democrat Peer, House of Lords
London SW1, UK