Nick Clegg - from election star to "traitor"? (News Feature)

By Anna Tomforde Sep 20, 2010, 17:17 GMT

London - Enjoy it while it lasts, Nick Clegg, Britain's Liberal leader, has told doubters of his historic coalition pact with the Conservatives.

Clegg, 43, is on the defensive.

Four months after his near-superstar status helped to bring the Liberals into government for the first time since World War II, he is accused of compromising Liberal principles for the sake of power.

'I know that being in this coalition isn't always easy. I hope each and every one of you is as proud as I am of what we have already achieved. I want everyone in this room to just stop and enjoy that for a second,' he told delegates at a party conference in Liverpool.

But the grassroots of the essentially left-liberal party, the third force in British politics, see things differently, amid fears that the pact with the Conservatives of David Cameron could condemn it to oblivion.

'Why do the Conservatives get all the praise for policies we have introduced into the coalition?' one delegate demanded to know.

Outside the hall, criticism was more blunt. 'I'm so ashamed, I would never consider voting Lib Dem again,' said one trade union protestor.

Another said: 'He sells out his people. I elected him on the basis of what he said before the election. He is a traitor to his true party followers.'

Opinion polls show that Britons, who have long been accustomed to powerful single-party rule, take an overall favourable view of coalition government.

But the Liberals, whose individual support before the election rose as high as 30 per cent - and who won a 23-per cent share of the vote in the May 6 election - have dropped back to around 15 per cent in the ratings.

The party, which poached a large number of previous Labour voters at the election, admits it has lost 4,000 members since May.

The polls show that voters have deserted the Liberal Democrats not so much for entering the coalition, but for endorsing savage public spending cuts due to be announced next month.

'Evidently there was a group of Lib Dem supporters who were willing to stomach a coalition with the Tories, but could not stomach 'Tory cuts',' said Politics Professor John Curtis, who compiled the poll for the Independent newspaper Monday.

On October 20, the government is expected to announce swingeing public spending cuts, aimed at reducing the massive budget deficit of more than 150 billion pounds (233 billion dollars).

The belt-tightening measures, even critics concede, would have had to be taken by any government - whether Labour or Conservative - in view of the need to correct the excessive spending of the pre-crisis years.

Welfare spending, which accounts for a third of the entire British budget, has been earmarked for savage cuts which, the government insists, will be fairly administered with an eye on the need for wealth distribution.

With power, Clegg's language has changed. The poor, he said recently, will have to accept 'unavoidable' cuts in benefits. Welfare should not be there 'to compensate the poor for their predicament, but act as an engine of mobility.'

Other areas of potential trouble for Clegg include the important question of the future of Trident, Britain's sea-based nuclear deterrent, voting reform, education, banking reform and higher taxation of the rich.

But while it remains to be seen whether the conference debates will spark real trouble for the four-month-old coalition, Clegg says he is convinced that there is no alternative for the Liberals on the left of British politics.

He warmly praised Cameron as a 'big politician' and admitted he was completely wrong when he called the Conservative lader a 'con' and a 'fake' during the election campaign.

'He (Cameron) has shown real flexibility and real pragmatism. He hasn't been dogmatic or doctrinaire,' said Clegg about the prime minister, who is also 43, and with whom he has a 'good chemistry.'

Meanwhile, another political leader in his mid-40s, the Labour Party's David Miliband, who could be elected the party's new leader next weekend, is rubbing his hands with glee.

Labour, he told the Observer newspaper Sunday, had already benefited from Clegg's malaise, and hoped to win over a further 10,000 disenchanted Lib Dem voters by Christmas. dpa at mat Author: Anna Tomforde