1. Stay single and free.
Before the 2010 election, people said they wouldn't vote Lib Dem because they'd never get into government. In the build-up to this election, people are saying they won't vote Lib Dem because they did go into government.
Party approval ratings shot down the moment they entered coalition, partly because the British public aren't used to such a thing and saw it as some sort of betrayal. However, the alternative was little better.
When Clegg didn't deliver on tuition fees, he was widely branded a traitor to all who had voted for him. Refusing to deliver on any policies at all, though, would have been at least as bad. The same applies to propping up a Conservative government and not trying to get into government for himself.
When voters put a cross by the name of a party, they call on that party to a) try to implement its policies and b) try to get into government. That's what we're choosing: the party we want to govern, and the party whose policies we want to see put into place. Clegg had an obligation to his voters to attempt both to the best of his abilities. To duck out of that, in an attempt to protect his pride or his personal approval ratings, would have been the real betrayal.
Imagine that you are a party with four main policies: progressive tax reform to lift millions of the poorest out of income tax, a job programme to create millions of apprenticeships for young people, a pupil premium to support disadvantaged children through school, and abolishing university tuition fees. When the votes are cast, the Conservatives offer you a choice: you can either have three of these policies, or none. What do you owe your voters?
The Lib Dems managed to get 75% of their manifesto into the coalition agreement, and have been more successful than anybody dreamed. You can't complain that they missed a few when the alternative would be nothing at all. With only a fraction of their voters being university students, the Lib Dems were loyal to their support in being willing to compromise on tuition fees to bring a greater good to more people. In fact, the new tuition fee system may even be fairer to students, and might not even break their pledge.
If Lib Dem voters feel betrayed not to get tuition fees, they would feel more betrayed not to get tuition fees, tax breaks, apprenticeships or the pupil premium, on top of all the other policies which the coalition has passed through. If they expected their vote to have no impact on the outcome, they should be overjoyed that the Lib Dems got their voters a voice in government and were able to implement the policies that their supporters voted for.
Unless, that is, they wanted their party to lose. Why vote for a party hoping that it doesn't get into government, that it doesn't get its policies through, wanting your vote to have pretty much no impact on the outcome? There are two reasons you would want Clegg to stay on the outside. Firstly, you might like to see him lead the opposition to a Conservative-only government, trying to block some of their cuts and fight for his own policy.
However, in our majoritarian system this would be largely impossible, as the Lib Dems would be a minority even in the opposition, and go back to being criticised as having no influence or consequence. They have been much more effective at influencing Tory policy, and pushing their own, from within government.
Secondly, you might just want to have voted for an opposition party so that you could continue to complain about the government, wanting Clegg to stand on the sidelines and score political points so that you could point to him and say how much you wish he'd won. You might have liked that self-righteous feeling that your party alone had never had to compromise, was ideologically pure, and you'd rather have 0% of your policies delivered than see your party get their hands dirty to actually do something productive and fight for 75%,
It's very easy to stay pure and clean when you never have to do anything. It's very easy to stay popular, grandstanding on the side, without every having to make decisions or get anything done. These disillusioned voters seem to have prioritised point-scoring over actual responsibility and results. They are upset that the party they voted to get into government decided to betray them by going into government.
If Lib Dem voters say they wish their party had stayed separate, what they are saying is that they'd want fewer Lib Dem policies and more Tory policies, fewer Lib Dem ministers and more Tory minister, which is exactly what Tory voters wish had happened too. It makes me question whether these voters really did support Clegg and his policies. If not, they are the ones who have betrayed him, and not the other way around. Just 74% of those who promised to vote Lib Dem actually did so on the day, and ICM poll suggests, whereas Clegg finished third and still managed to deliver 75% of his policies. Who broke their promise to whom?
It's not just policy that the Lib Dems would have missed out on if they'd stayed alone. A Tory minority government would not only have been able to be much harsher with its cuts, and not offer any of the progressive policies its junior partner brought to the table, but it would be deeply unstable. At a time of financial crisis, this country needed a stable, coherent government most of us. Clegg could have stayed popular and played games with our economic future by thriving on instability, but instead he did the responsible thing and shelved partisan differences to work together for the greater good.
As well as stability, this brought legitimacy. A coalition was only on the cards in the first place because the Tories had failed to gain a majority of seats, and that was because they had only received 36% of the popular vote. That is hardly a mandate to govern alone. The coalition was criticised as undemocratic, and not what anyone had voted for, but a combination of Lib Dem and Tory policy answered the demands of 59% of voters, which satisfies the democratic requirement of majority rule.
Finally, if the Lib Dems had gone their own way, they would have again been criticised as not ever getting into government. By entering this historic coalition, they destroyed the pattern of one-party rule alternating between the Conservatives and Labour, paving the way for the plurality of small parties we see influencing politics today. All of these parties are now being taken seriously as potential parties of government, and that is a respect the Lib Dems earned.
2. Work with Labour.
Even if a coalition was needed, for reasons of stability, legitimacy, or just to set a constitutional precedent, there are many who criticise Clegg for choosing blue over red. Hoping for a progressive Lib-Lab partnership in the event of a hung parliament, these left-leaning voters also felt betrayed by the decision to work with the Tories. But was it really a choice?
A government needs 326 seats for an outright majority, to form a stable, legitimate government. The Conservatives had 306, and with the Lib Dems' 57 they bumped that up to a secure 363. Labour only had 258, and so even with the Lib Dems they would fall short at 315, barely more than the Tories had on their own. Such a government would have no mandate to rule, and that's not only to do with the seats.
Labour are currently experiencing support amongst moderates unhappy with Tory cuts, but it is easy to forget that in 2010 the opposite was true. Gordon Brown's party were widely blamed for the recent financial crash and recession, rightly or wrongly, and after inheriting the post from Tony Blair he was already being criticised as an unelected Prime Minister. To be shored up by the Liberal Democrats after finishing a distant second would be deeply undemocratic, not respecting that a plurality of people had supported Cameron and his Conservatives.
Clegg had always said that the party with the most seats had the first right to seek to build a coalition, and in this case that happened to be the Tories. He simply did what our democracy required of him, and entered the government that best reflected the people's will. Remember that only 29% of people voted for Labour, which is closer to the Lib Dem's 23% than to the Conservative's 36%, so Brown had no more right to be Prime Minister than Clegg did.
That's why calls to expand to a "rainbow coalition", supplementing the Labour and Lib Dem seats with those of the SNP, Plaid Cymru, SDLP and Green parties, also wouldn't have worked. Brown would still not be a legitimate leader, no matter how many other parties worked out a deal to prop him up. As it is, this mixture would still only have a very slim majority of 328 seats, and would have been less stable and involve more compromise. Even if it wasn't against Clegg's democratic responsibility to seek the most stable and legitimate government, such a mish-mash would have seen Lib Dem influence decrease rather than increase. He had a duty to his voters to get as many policies and ministers as he could.
3. Work with the Conservatives.
That just leaves the present outcome, the option which we all criticise Clegg for taking, but which now looks like the only reasonable choice. Did he betray his voters, after all? Or was he just dealt a difficult hand, partially due to our electoral system, and chose the route in which he had to let them down the least? It seems to me that Clegg chose to deliver as many Liberal Democrat policies as he possibly could, and to get as many Liberal Democrats as possible in the cabinet, which is exactly what we voted for. He followed his responsibility to us, the voters, as well as to a country which needed a strong, legitimate, and financially responsible government.
It's all very well to criticise a man who has to choose the lesser of two evils, but critique is worthless if you can't provide a better alternative. Politics is about compromise, and rather than criticising anybody who delivers a less-than-perfect outcome we should learn to celebrate the partial victories, and acknowledge when somebody has tried their best to do their duty as a party leader and representative for this country. We may not like where we ended up, but that is more the fault of how the voters and the electoral system dealt the cards than how Clegg had to choose to play them.
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