Clegg pledges to flex his muscles

Lib Dem leader seeks to distance party from Tories – but Cameron fails to give him credit for moderating policies Nick Clegg is to begin the delicate process of distancing himself from the Conservatives’ embrace in the wake of last week’s election results, by asserting that “this is a coalition of necessity and not conviction”. In a speech on Wednesday to mark the anniversary of the coalition and the start of a second phase, he will promise to blow his party’s trumpet more and spell out where it has moderated the Conservatives’ position through what the Lib Dems describe as their blend of social fairness and economic efficiency. But the claim that the Lib Dems have softened the impact of some Conservative policies was rejected by David Cameron, who said in interviews: “I don’t accept the whole idea that the role of one party is somehow to moderate the other. The Conservative party, under my leadership, has changed. It is a new and different Conservative party.” In an indication of the more public disputes ahead, he also refused to give Clegg credit for imposing a rethink on the government’s NHS reforms. In his speech Clegg will admit last week’s election results were awful and rule out any prospect of a centre-right realignment, describing such talk as “nonsensical and naive”. He will promise: “In the next phase of the coalition, both partners will be able to be clearer in their identities, but equally clear about the need to support government and government policy. We will stand together, but not so closely that we stand in each other’s shadow. You will see a strong liberal identity in a strong coalition government. You might even call it muscular liberalism.” With some cabinet members anxious at the prospect of collective discipline collapsing as briefing wars break out across the coalition, Clegg will argue he can be more assertive without threatening the government’s stability. “Nobody wants a return to the nightmarish coalition that existed between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Nobody wants tit-for-tat government.” But he will also list things his party has blocked by being in coalition, including a replacement for Trident in this parliament, cutting inheritance tax for the wealthiest, renegotiating fundamental elements of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, building more prisons and replacing the Human Rights Act. Clegg will try to give his anxious party a glimpse of how it can rebuild a new constituency in time for the next election. He will insist the Lib Dems “will not define ourselves in relation to the other parties. If it requires a position on a spectrum, it is the centre. We are camped on the liberal centre ground of British politics. And we’re not moving.” He will also argue that the party can develop a unique offer to the electorate as the party that combines economic efficiency and social justice. He will say: “There is a reason neither of the two bigger parties won last May. Neither of them were really trusted to deliver both a strong, dynamic economy and a fair society. We can be trusted on both counts. At the next election we will say that we are demonstrably more economically credible than Labour, and more committed at heart to fairness than the Conservatives. “I am confident that showing we can combine economic soundness with social justice – competence with a conscience – will make us an even more formidable political force in the future. There are millions of people who want a liberal politics of the centre.” However, a host of cabinet ministers and senior Tories have undermined Clegg’s claim to be a moderating influence by stressing how much Liberal Democrat support has allowed the coalition to be more radical on public service changes and the deficit than if the Conservatives had been a minority administration. In interviews conducted with Andrew Rawnsley for his Channel 4 documentary A Year Inside Downing Street, but not broadcast, a succession of Tories hail the impact of the Liberal Democrats. The work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, says: “It’s helpful that we have two parties in tow pursuing a reform agenda because it means that you face really only one party [Labour] that is opposed to it. It does help that we’ve got two tied together so it leaves you only one political force to deal with. It helps also to persuade the other side that they are in a minority. “We’ve got a lot – my welfare reforms, the education reforms, the budget, huge changes – all of these are big, big Conservative-driven themes”. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, states: “There’s a massive advantage in being a two-party government for whose parties 60% of the voters had voted at the election. If we’d been a minority government potentially facing the prospect of an early, snap, opportunistic election to try and secure a majority, it would have been much more difficult to put in place the tough programme of deficit reduction that we did.” William Hague, the foreign secretary says: “A Conservative government with a very small majority or in a minority would have been massively constrained in what we could take through parliament.” The chancellor, George Osborne, states: “We have put together a much stronger coalition government than anyone would have believed possible the morning after the general election and we’ve been able to take on big issues, not just on the economy, but on welfare, education, police reform. And that’s because there’s an appetite from all members of the government, Liberal Democrat and Conservative, to not waste this period in government but to do things with it to improve our country.” Cameron himself hints the coalition has developed an ideology of its own. “There’s been a sense that we don’t want to be a lowest common denominator government just trying to legislate where we agree.” One of the leaders of the Tory right, David Davis, claims: “The people who’ve paid the price for the coalition are the Liberals. The really big intellectual move for the Liberals was the move to accept the cuts. More than accept the cuts: to actually accept they were going to be the front of the cuts. “This was the point at which the Orange Book Liberals, essentially Gladstonian Liberals, came to the fore and said: yes, we’ve got to do this. And once they’d taken that leap into the cold water, they couldn’t pull back. They don’t have an escape. They have the best seats in the aeroplane and no parachutes. So they’re not going to blow the aeroplane up. It is simply not going to happen. “They’re going to enjoy the ride all the way to the destination. And hope at the end they get to where they want to be.” Liberal-Conservative coalition Nick Clegg David Cameron Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk

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