Feeling listless and a little bit lost? Sick and tired of being derided? You want to be seen to make a proper contribution in government, but increasingly you wonder if there’s any point. Are you the Deputy Prime Minister?
If so, David Cameron and the taxpayers of the United Kingdom can help. Ministers are launching a new multi-billion scheme to help Liberal Democrats who are not in education, useful employment or training, a group known as LDNEETS.
Mr Cameron said last night: “We’re determined to do everything we can to help Nick. I know it’s tough. For school he only went to Westminster. Then he studied Anthropology at Cambridge, of all places. This has left him ill-equipped to compete in the modern world. But everyone deserves a second chance.”
Mr Clegg will start with some light announcing of policies to give him experience. If that goes well he will try his hand at making long speeches telling Mr Cameron what to do. Eventually he may even be allowed to chair meetings at the heart of government. Mr Clegg’s ambition is to work abroad, possibly at the European Commission in Brussels.
Nick said: “It is very sad. There are millions of people like me. Well, actually there are 57 Liberal Democrat MPs. But I am grateful for the opportunity.”
Lib Dem voters ‘mainly lower-middle and wornikg class’? I think you’re thinking of some other country. Lib Dems are clearly the party of the educated middle class, instinctive believers in education, rationalism and individualism. The Tory and Labour parties, by contrast, are both (normally) instinctively authoritarian which is why they both appeal more to the wornikg classes. The real aberration in the present lineup is the Tory leader, David Cameron, who is *much* more liberal in the old-fashioned sense of the term, as in ‘believing in liberty’ than his predecessors in that post. The entertaining part of the present coalition will be seeing how long Cameron can hold his party together, as it’s going against what many of its own faithful believe are its basic values.