No, you didn't misread the headline. Nick Clegg has made some big mistakes, and I've not been afraid to criticise him, be it the tuition fee pledge/vote or the increase in VAT. However, if anything my opinion of him has improved recently, and I have a new-found sense of respect for him.
I'll be frank in saying that after our crushing losses as a party in May 2014 (the local and European elections), I was tempted to call for Clegg to go. Our party base appeared to be eroding faster and faster, with little electoral reward in return. Such a move would have been a knee-jerk reaction, especially when you consider the wider context (which we as a general public don't always do). For starters, in 2010 there was no popular alternative option to take. A coalition with Labour? The numbers didn't add up for a start, a multi-party coalition including the likes of Plaid Cymru and the SNP would have been needed (sound familiar?), and do you really like the thought of Gordon Brown plodding on as Prime Minister? Even if a leadership election had been held, there would have been a good couple of months of an 'interim Prime Minister', and when the leadership election concluded we'd have had another Prime Minister who hadn't had an electoral mandate. Furthermore, documented accounts from the likes of Andrew Rawnsley (The End of the Party) and Adam Boulton (Hung Together) make it quite clear that Labour didn't really fancy doing a deal, as the latter notes:
"At least half the Labour side, and the dominant, elected side at that - Harman, Balls and Miliband - did not have their hearts set on reaching a deal" (p.233).
The point of this illustration is that Labour accusations of "selling out" to the Tories appear strange when Labour weren't keen on a deal either. So how about another option; go with no one? We could have trumpeted the 'principled' line for a while, but we'd never be seen as a potential party of government. A minority Tory government would have struggled along until a second election, where they most likely would have won a majority. Would we get praise for letting that happen? I sincerely doubt it.
Clegg made key errors in the early stages of this Parliament. You could understand him wanting to show the Coalition working, but he appeared too close to David Cameron, and was too naive to think that the Conservatives wouldn't get heavily involved in campaigning against the Alternative Vote (the Labour Party hardly helped, either). However, he deserves far more credit than he is getting. In 2012 he publicly made an apology for the tuition fee fiasco. This may sound a little pathetic on paper, but how often do politicians actually apologise for a specific policy error? Furthermore, despite Ed Miliband's bravado about David Cameron running scared of the TV debates (which he is, nevertheless), Nick Clegg was the only leader with the guts to take on Nigel Farage during the European elections, and it was Clegg who made the challenge in the first place. We've been reduced to 1 MEP, but I'm proud that we had a positive message for staying in the EU, rather than a bitter infighting Tory brand or a fence-sitting Labour pledge. Clegg also takes a weekly radio phone in on LBC radio, which again should not be understated. Could you imagine David Cameron doing that? Or Ed Miliband?
Nick Clegg was also a sport for going on the comedy programme "The Last Leg", where "the unthinkable happened" (in the words of host Adam Hills) and Nick Clegg "did well. Really well. I mean, really, really well". When Clegg was challenged to provide Alex Brooker with a solid reason for voting, he pulled out this humorous yet brilliant analogy: “if you go to Nando’s and get someone else to go up to the counter and order for you, you can’t complain if they come back with a meal you don’t want.” Once again, can you picture Cameron or Miliband going on the show? I'll extend it further and ask if you could possibly imagine Natalie Bennett appearing comfortable in the studio? I've not forgotten Farage, but for all his confidence I can't imagine him winning anyone over.
Nick Clegg call for pluralism when he was first elected Liberal Democrat leader in 2007, and he should be admired for tackling petty tribalism. If the Labour Party failed to form the next government but were able to take Sheffield Hallam off Nick Clegg, you can imagine that they'd celebrate like they'd won a landslide. Clegg should also be commended for the (broad) stability of government. How many people, especially on the Left, predicted the downfall of the Coalition in the early years? Even the more generous commentators presumed that it would break up in 2014 or early 2015, yet here we are. For the sake of the economy and the markets, it is a good thing that we'd had a government with a comfortable (combined) majority for a fixed-term Parliament.
It's popular to caricature and bash Clegg, but the people who do so rarely come up with a plausible or realistic alternative. Again, the dissenting voices on the Left would do well to expect a Green Party predicted to have 1 to 3 (at best) MPs to turn around and demand that the largest party in May reverse all economic cuts, bring in a Citizen's Income which would cost more than twice the NHS budget and aim for a zero-growth economy. The reasons for hating Clegg are often clichéd, too; "he broke his promise on tuition fees". Implicit in that is that you should hate Clegg for breaking a promise; using this logic, you should hate pretty much every politician (which I'm sure many do, but Clegg seems to bear the brunt of most of it). How about another one: "he sold out to the Tories". I'm pretty sure that getting the main policies from the front page of your manifesto into government for the first time in generations isn't selling out. I'm no lovestruck cheerleader for Nick Clegg, but I'm not ashamed to give him credit where it is due, and he is due a lot of it.
