The Liberal Democrats should secure agreement on the introduction of proportional representation before entering another coalition government, Nick Clegg has said in his first TV interview since his party’s general election drubbing.
the former Lib Dem leader said that under the current political system, including the structure of the voting system, party funding and prime minister’s questions, it is impossible for smaller parties to avoid being discriminated against.
He said the Lib Dems should secure agreement from one of the main parties, the Conservatives or Labour, that a system of proportional representation would be introduced before agreeing to another coalition.
Asked about electoral reform and future coalition deals on the BBC’s Sunday Politics show, Clegg said: “Should it be a condition? Yes. How do you make it a condition? You can’t unilaterally decree a constitutional change as a smaller party in a system still dominated by the older parties without in one way or another trying to persuade them to come on board.”
Clegg, who led his party into coalition with the Conservatives in 2010, stepped down after the subsequent loss of 49 of its 57 seats in the 7 May election.
He claimed the national party funding rules restricting funding in local constituency parties had had a coach and horses driven through them in the general election by the Conservatives.
But he gave little ground to those who believe he made a mistake in office by initially cooperating so closely with the Conservatives,saying the loss of public support began the moment he joined the coalition with the Tories.
He said: “We took a gamble, which clearly in our own political self interest did not work – it worked for the country. We put country before party, and I will never apologise for what I think was the heroic role the Liberal Democrats played – at considerable political cost to ourselves – in order to rescue the country at a time of outright economic peril back in 2010”.
Clegg insisted he had given the public ample warning that he might join a Conservative-led coalition in 2010. Cooperation had been necessary to show the British public that coalition could work he said, but claimed no future Lib Dem leader would need to demonstrate that.
Discussing whether it was possible for a minor party to succeed in a coalition under the current electoral system, he said: “It is a very difficult dilemma to be a smaller liberal party either competing against the sort of old duopoly in British politics and of course operating, whether it’s inside or outside government, given the rules of the game – electoral system, party funding, the way in which prime minister’s questions is organised, all the rest of it – flatter the larger parties and discriminate against the smaller ones.”
He admitted a minor party could not unilaterally decree a constitutional change in a system still dominated by the older parties. He said the task was to persuade the smaller parties to come on board.
He also claimed the caps on election spending had been broken in the election: “One of the things that needs to happen in the kind of technical postmortem about this general election is how on earth the Conservatives spent such vast American-style sums of money across the country from a centrally directed campaign, which ran a coach and horses through the financial limits on how local candidates can campaign.
“So they were able to do that. We clearly were not able to match that remotely. I mean, it was a real David and Goliath battle for resources.”
Clegg blamed the Lib Dem general election collapse on a late swing prompted by a fear that had its genesis in Scotland. He said: “My own view is something shifted very, very late in the day in England, in English constituency after English constituency.
“I think this really quite profound fear that the country would be run by a sort of combination of Ed Miliband and Alex Salmond really chilled the English heart, and it meant that a lot of undecided voters or waverers decided in the end to play it safe. And playing it safe meant voting Conservative.”
He said: “There was this sort of vice-like effect between this nationalist fever that swept Scotland, which we now know with hindsight meant that 20% of the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party, being Scottish, was sort of condemned before the starting gun had even been fired.
“And then there was the reaction that in England, which was very skilfully exploited by the Conservatives, by the Conservative-supporting newspapers and so on. And also was powerful because it was true. People aren’t daft. They understood that Ed Miliband couldn’t govern without, by one way or another, depending on Alex Salmond and the SNP. So I think that really did take a life of its own in the latter stages of the campaign.”
