THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Three decades ago, Norman Tebbit was the most hated man in Britain. In the eyes of his opponents, Tebbit was held to represent everything that was brutal, vicious and disgusting about the Thatcher government.
Thirty years on, British politics has at last produced a comparable villain. It is not David Cameron. Nor, astonishingly, has George Osborne been singled out for special opprobrium, despite his patrician sneer and trust fund. Local government minister Eric Pickles more or less put in a written application for the post of Coalition bully-boy, but remains a nationally popular figure.
Instead nice, gentle Nick Clegg has secured the position of Britain’s most hated man. He has been burnt in effigy by student rioters. Police have told him that he must no longer cycle to work for fear of physical attack. Excrement has been shoved through the letter box of his Sheffield constituency home, from which his family may now have to move for safety reasons.
Nor is that all. Clegg’s decision last May to join forces with Cameron is starting to look to some like an historic mistake. Inside the House of Commons, a division is beginning to open between Coalition Lib Dems and the back benches. To those with a sense of history this is very dangerous indeed – because this is exactly what happened the last time the Conservative Party and the Liberals entered a grand coalition, at the end of the First World War. By 1922, David Lloyd George had become a leader without a party, and the Liberals were fatally split.
History may be repeating itself. Lib Dem ministers love being in office, but appear remote as a result. On the back benches there is deep unhappiness and everywhere a chronic lack of conviction, epitomised by the astonishing inability of Vince Cable to state which way he will vote on government proposals to raise tuition fees to £9,000, a measure for which he is personally responsible. >>> Peter Oborne | Thursday, December 02, 2010
