The Deputy Prime Minister was interviewed on Friday by my colleague Matt Chorley for today’s Independent on Sunday. It was a combative and defiant performance, with a trace of arrogance – “Vince and I have been living this [tuition fees] for months, they [other Lib Dem MPs] haven’t.” I have written about Clegg, a lucky politician, in my column.
Photograph of students hanging his effigy: AFP/Getty.
There was plenty of interest in the interview that we could not fit in the newspaper, so here is a full transcript.
HOW ARE YOU?
Fine, well. I was in Kazakhstan yesterday.
HOW WAS THAT?
Quite crazy actually. I had an overnight flight there, sleepless, and then straight into 14 hours of meetings and speeches. The summit itself… meeting Clinton, Merkel and Berlusconi, and Russians…
HAVE YOU GOT USED TO THAT NOW?
In a very weird way – obviously in my previous incarnation in Europe I wouldn’t meet people at that level – but that kind of atmosphere of summitry, of pouring over impenetrable texts and arguing about the semi colons felt slightly like the old days.
THE LAST SIX, EIGHT, NINE MONTHS, YOU’VE GONE FROM BEING THE MOST POPULAR POLITICIAN SINCE CHURCHILL –
And then branded a Nazi…
AND NOW YOU’RE THE MOST HATED MAN IN BRITAIN
Is that an empirical assertion?
HOW HAVE YOU ADJUSTED TO THE WEIGHT OF ABUSE?
I’ve never imagined would be any different to this. I always expected coalition politics to be like this. We are doing something really, really big and new in British politics and it is really early days. You have got different political leaders from different parties actually working together rather than against each other. That’s an unbelievably controversial thing to do. It runs completely contrary to the highly tribal tradition of Westminster politics. And because we are doing it at a time of crisis for British politics, we are also having to take spectacularly controversial – and in some cases frankly downright unpopular – decisions, and I just kind of think well, time will tell. The only logical thing to do when you are faced with those kind of circumstances is to be really upfront about the difficult decisions as early as we can. Don’t try and run away from it. Don’t try to hide it, don’t try and paper over it.Just say hands up, yeah no-one won the election, we came third in the election. On fees, the other parties were implacably opposed to our policy. Both were wedded to fees. Whether we’d have gone with Labour or the Tories it would have been the same. We wouldn’t have been able to deliver our policy. We had to deal with the deficit; we are sorting this stuff out. It is an unbelievably controversial thing to do. Even in normal circumstances, doing big changes, lasting changes is controversial. But it’s doubly controversial if you do it in a manner which is politically new because a lot of people don’t like the fact that their comfort blanket of old pendulum politics has been snatched away from them. I honestly wouldn’t have embarked on this if I didn’t anticipate that I would have to grit my teeth, display a bit of resilience, and explain calmly and logically over and over again why we are doing what we are doing.
HAVE THERE BEEN ANY MOMENTS WHERE YOU’VE HAD SECOND THOUGHTS, REGRETS?
No. None at all. None at all. I’m absolutely convinced that almost any other course of action would have been a disaster for the country. I genuinely think, with the benefit of hindsight, more people have understood why we took the steps we did in going into the coalition in the way that we did. I think the coalition agreement remains a remarkable document, an extraordinarily far-sighted document. Anticipating in a very, very short period of time the bumps and glitches and dilemmas we are facing now. And on the biggest controversy of all at the moment which is on fees, the details of the policy is much, much fairer and more progressive than people presently appreciate. Because we are not getting a hearing at all on the policy stuff. It’s all about pledges and betrayals and Judas and all the rest of it. Once people focus on that, and combine it with what we are doing in the schools system, protecting the schools budget, adding the pupil premium, introducing new pre-school entitlements for all two year olds from disadvantaged backgrounds. We are doing something radical. Ask any educationalist; indeed ask anyone who compares education system in the world… you know this because I’ve bored you about this before. I first wrote about this in a pamphlet I co-authored about 10 years ago. And every piece of evidence from the OECD and elsewhere showed the abiding problem in the British education system, particularly the English education system, is we have one of the most socially segregated education systems in the western world. And that hasn’t shifted at all, even with the dramatic expansion in student numbers in university. So what we are doing by actually tackling disadvantage and the link between social disadvantage and educational underperformance, when it matters – in other words when kids are young, before they are even thinking about going to university. Combined with the progressive graduate – not student – graduate contribution system where for the first time since fees have been introduced, no-one will face upfront fees. At the moment 40 per cent of students, because they are part-time, pay fees upfront. I really think as the dust settles on this, and if we implement it successfully, I really think it will stand the test of time. I think people will look back in 10 years time and say that was a really big reform. It was really controversial, it was done in the teeth of extraordinary political opposition, but actually it has done more than any set of reforms in a long time to release social mobility. I wouldn’t be as firm in my view on this and as determined to persuade my colleagues that this is the right thing to do if I genuinely didn’t believe… No-one can accuse me of being flighty on this – I have been writing about this and talking about this, overall change in the education system, for about a decade. It’s the one thing I have probably written about more. It was MY choice to slap the pupil premium on the front of the manifesto because I genuinely believe that the link between that and what happens in university…. We are now working on some really important details about the link between what happens at school and university. We are looking at an idea so that about 18,000 students – so that’s more than enough to cover all those presently on free school meals and all those on the pupil premium – bright but disadvantaged kids, will go to university and we will under the scheme we are looking at guarantee them two years of free tuition. So if they are doing a three year course, they will just have no fees for two years at all. They wouldn’t pay a penny as students. One of the things that has worried me more than anything else over the last couple of weeks has been because of the passion, the hurt feelings, the demos and the slogans and the vitriol, I have no doubt that one of the collateral effects of this has been it has been intimidating precisely to the people I would like to encourage to go to university.
And it’s immensely frustrating to me to see a policy which lowers the barriers of entry to university – that is a fact, it’s not an opinion, it is a fact – is being portrayed as putting up barriers. If you are a poor kid but you are really bright and you are on what will be our pupil premium, you want to go university. Fine, we will make it so easy – a) by making sure you don’t have to pay it back until you earn a lot more money, but b) two of the three years of a normal course will be tuition fee free.
HOW WILL IT BE PAID FOR?
It will be partly us, with our £150m national scholarship fund. We will compel universities that want to charge more than £6,000 – compel them to provide that matching year free.The universities have failed. The system we inherited from Labour in terms of encouraging social diversity at university is utterly toothless. It’s a complete failure. It’s reviewed every five years. I think the last time a ministerial letter was sent out was I think sent by Charles Clarke. People keep citing £9,000. You know, £9,000 should be the exception not the rule. If you want to go through the £6,000 barrier you are going to have to jump through a lot of hoops. Rather than having it reviewed every five years which is what Labour did, we will review it every year and we will compel you as a university to help children.
HOW SIGNIFICANT WILL THIS BE IN PERSUADING SOME OF YOUR COLLEAGUES OF THE MERITS OF THE PACKAGE? THERE IS A FEELING AMONGST SOME OF YOUR MPS THAT THE HANDLING OF THE ISSUE HAS NOT BEEN GREAT.
Vince and I have really gone out of our way to explain this. Vince and I did slide shows for our parliamentary party meeting on the contents of the package before we finalised it. So no-one can claim…
But what I do accept completely is at the moment we are not getting a hearing for this policy at all because the allegation made is made with the heart: it’s you betrayed me. It’s a really personal thing, and I’ve had it directed at me and our response is quite cerebral. The allegation is made with the heart and the answer is made with the head, and when you have that the heart always wins. Because that is appealing to emotions – Because I am so worried about the intimidating effect the kind of noise is having on precisely the youngsters I desperately want to see in university. Even though the number of people going to universities is now beyond 40 per cent and a decade or more ago it was 12 per cent, it hasn’t actually changed.
IT’S MORE OF THE SAME PEOPLE GOING TO UNIVERSITY?
It’s fine, it’s great, you know I’m middle – I’m from an affluent background, I went to university. The fact that more and more people, who are comparatively-speaking lucky, have gone to university is a great thing to celebrate.Because the alternative to make all of this affordable would have been to cut and slash student numbers, I disagree with that completely. I want to see more going to university; I want to see more people from disadvantaged backgrounds. What we are going to do is in the New Year we will write to every secondary school and every FE College in the country to explain to people what the system actually is. I haven’t discussed that in government, but it is going to happen. I passionately feel we have got to get to the kids when they are about 13 or 14 particularly. We are going to send stuff to schools so parents can see it, teachers can see it, and head teachers can see it. If you combine with the all-age career service we are going to launch in 2012 which is from 13 years upwards providing teenagers lots more advice on the options available to them and obligations on universities to publish lots more information about what courses mean. I hope that once the dust settles, once the fog and smoke of war disperse we will be able get more information out.
THE NUS ARE PLAYING A REALLY BIG ROLE IN THIS. I SAW YOUR LETTER TO AARON PORTER THIS WEEK. HOW IRRESPONSIBLE DO YOU THINK THEY ARE BEING?
I don’t think they are being straight with students. I mean I speak with students in my own constituency, don’t forget I represent one of the big university seats in the country. The two biggest employers in my constituency are Sheffield Hallam and Sheffield university and what I am really struck by is when I ask the students what do you think the NUS would do they say, ‘Oh, free tuition.’ It’s not. Their position, and indeed that of Labour, is a graduate tax.
If you were a care worker starting on £21,000 you pay about £7 a month. Under the current scheme you pay £81 a month and under the two per cent graduate tax proposed by Ed Miliband it’s about £36.
The irony is there are people there yelling and screaming against our scheme who appear not to be open about the fact that they themselves advocate a scheme that would penalise poor graduates more than our scheme. I did appeal to Aaron Porter – I understand it’s great fun. I was a student once as well. It’s great going on demos and really having a crack at the government of the day and I genuinely understand the anxiety but I also think that it’s now time for the NUS and Ed Miliband and others to just come clean about what their proposals are and then in a fair comparison in a square open contest compare it to what we are doing. I spent months, much to the anguish of officials here, getting them to work up proposals on a graduate tax. There is no way you can work up proposals on a graduate tax which are either more workable or fairer than what we are proposing.
THE BASIC PROBLEM IS IT GOES BACK TO THE PLEDGE. YOU SPOKE AT PARTY CONFERENCE LAST YEAR SAYING YOU WANTED TO DROP THE POLICY. EVEN WHILE YOU WERE SIGNING PLEDGES DURING THE ELECTION CAMPAIGN YOUR NEGOTIATORS WERE LOOKING AT WHICH POLICIES MIGHT GO IN A COALITION, WHY DID YOU SIGN IT? ARE YOU STILL WEDDED TO THE POLICY?
The first thing is we did not go into the last election saying we are going to scrap tuition fees in a parliament. Actually our position was adjusted quite significantly when faced with the financial realities, we said it would take more than a parliament to do so.
Secondly, clearly when you sign a pledge like that during an election campaign you do it on the explicit understanding that is what you deliver if you win.
BUT YOU KNEW BOTH LABOUR AND THE TORIES DIDN’T AGREE WITH THAT.
No-one, including myself, signed the pledge anticipating 1,001 possible ramifications if there was a hung parliament. By the way part of the pledge was to make the system fairer than what it is at the moment. And at least that bit we are doing.
We came third. We lost. Not only that, even if we had gone into coalition with Labour we wouldn’t have been able to deliver the policy because they were flatly opposed to it. So when people say you betrayed us, my answer with them is I wouldn’t have to in any way change our policy stance if we had won outright. We lost.
IS THE REASON BECAUSE THE TORIES WANT TO PUT UP TUITION FEES?
Of the three main parties who went into the general election campaign, only one the Liberal democrats wanted to scrap tuition fees. That party came third. That is a fact. I can’t change that. I’m almost flattered to think people believe I can airbrush history out and sort of somehow portray us as the winners of the election.
We didn’t win and the other two parties were not going to give us any space to deliver that policy. So it was quite right by the way for Danny Alexander to anticipate the inevitable, that whether we went in with labour or the Tories, we were going to have to give on this. It would be lovely to wave a magic wand and live in a world in which we won the general election, there’s no fiscal crisis, and there was no need to deal with disadvantage in schools. That’s not the world we live. And if there’s one thing I’m not going to apologise for as the leader of the Liberal Democrats into government after 60 or 70 years of being out of government, it’s that you just cannot avoid but deal with the world the way it is. Gone are the days where we can pretend that the world is as we simply would like it. And you just wipe the slate clean.
ARE SOME OF YOUR COLLEAGUES STILL ADJUSTING TO THAT?
Of course, and I don’t blame them for it. That’s why I have gone out of the way much to endless pressure in the Westminster village, give us a bit of space to talk about what we’re going to do and then we’ll tell you before the vote how we’re going to vote. I think this is new for the Liberal Democrats and given it is self-evidently extraordinarily controversial for us given the totemic status of our higher education policy. I believe in this policy but I equally passionately believe as a Liberal Democrat leader, passionately believe in the virtue and the strength of internal open discussion and that’s why I fought – contrary to traditional, established Westminster orthodoxy – I fought to give us the space to do that. You get all the conventions heaped on your head, ooh you can’t possibly – well you can. I’m afraid on this occasion I am not going to apologies for saying No. I want to give my team the time to look at this and then we will come out and say what we are going to do.
THE COALITION AGREEMENT SAYS IF THE POLICY IS NOT ONE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS CAN ACCEPT, MPS CAN ABSTAIN. GIVEN VINCE IS RESPONSIBLE AND YOU THINK POLICY IS A GOOD IDEA, WHAT IS THE DEFINITION OF ‘LIBERAL DEMOCRATS CANNOT ACCEPT’? IS THAT THE PARTY AS A WHOLE?
I, as leader of a party in coalition which is now under a considerable amount of pressure, attach a huge amount of importance on trying to maintain as much unity as possible. We are no good in coalition government if rancour and bitterness and division creeps into our ranks. So even if at the end of the day it transpires that we don’t all vote or not vote in the same way I nonetheless think it’s really important that everybody has time to think their way through the policy. Vince and I have been living this for months, they haven’t. I know you get this kind very traditional slightly stuffy old view that how can you possibly do this, it’s against Westminster convention. Well this is a pretty exceptional state of affairs. a) it’s a coalition government and b) this is an exceptionally difficult issue for the Liberal Democrats. I don’t anticipate there will be anything quite as difficult for us as this in this five year parliament.
WILL ALL YOUR MINISTERS BE IN THE SAME PLACE AFTER THE VOTE?
Of course.
NOBODY IS GOING TO LEAVE THE GOVERNMENT?
I don’t want anyone to leave. Sincere disagreement is the healthy lifeblood of a strong party. People mocked us at the time of the coalition agreement that I spent as much time with different committees in the party and late night parliamentary party meetings. Actually, it really made the difference that I said to you guys [the press] just back off a minute, we are an open party and we need just a little bit of space to talk this stuff through. And when we decide we’ll decide collectively, right? It doesn’t mean you insist on complete unity, it does mean that if you disagree at the end of the day, you disagree with everyone agreeing that everyone has had a chance to have a look at it.
And that’s really important to me because this is really difficult. This is clearly controversial. And it is my first duty it seems to me as a leader of one of the parties in the coalition that if I want to carry on punching above our weight in the coalition, as we are, I’ve got make sure that my own party when taking these difficult decisions doesn’t retain a sense of grievance, that’s what I’m trying t do in these last few days before the vote.
WHAT’S YOUR HUNCH AT THE MOMENT, WILL IT END UP BEING AN ABSTENTION?
I’m simply not going to go into it. I’m not going to give a running commentary. It’s pointless. I believe in the policy, I also believe…
THERE I SOMETHING ODD THOUGH THAT THE MINISTER IN CHARGE OF THE POLICY MIGHT NOT VOTE FOR IT.
I’m sure the country and you can live with just a few days of suspense before we all decide what we are going to do. Vince has made it clear and I have made it clear that we believe that this is the best policy in these circumstances, right? It’s not rocket science but equally in order to give people space to come along with that journey with us it helps just to not try to bounce people into it.
DO YOU WANT TO VOTE FOR IT?
Of course.
IN AN IDEAL WORLD ALL YOUR COLLEAGUES WOULD VOTE FOR IT AS WELL?
Of course I would like everyone to vote for this, we are not there yet.
YOU’VE GOT FOUR OR FIVE DAYS. DO YOU THINK IT IS DOABLE?
I’m actually spending lot of time trying to persuade people of the not-unalloyed virtues of the policy and openly admitting it is not what we would have liked if we were governing on our own but in the circumstances and coupled with the pupil premium, coupled with early intervention, I really think we will look back in 10 or 15 years time and think actually that was quite a brave and bold and socially progressive thing to do. We are not being coy about this, we are just saying instead of doing the normal Westminster thing of saying I’m going to impose my writ on people before I’ve talked to them about it, I’m just doing something a bit different and actually saying I’d like to talk to people and persuade people before telling how we are going t vote. I don’t find this unreasonable.
GIVEN YOU SAID THIS IS PROBABLY THE TOUGHEST THING YOU’LL FACE OVER THE NEXT FIVE YEARS ARE THERE ANY CIRCUMSTANCES YOU CAN SEE WHERE YOU WON’T STILL BE IN THE COALITION COME 2015?
No. Not a week goes by without a commentator saying next week the coalition will fall apart, not a day goes by without one article saying the Liberal Democrats can’t possible sustain this and not a week or day goes by without us confounding those views. This is self-evidently the issue which is placing the greatest strain on us, and I am not hiding that.
WHAT STATE WILL THE LIB DEMS BE IN BY 2015?
Matt, listen. I was told by almost every single authoritative political commentator at the last general election we would be lucky to get 40 seats. It’s a cottage industry in British politics to predict doom and gloom for the Liberal Democrats. It’s because we don’t fit the old map of the red team and the blue team. We mess up that mental map, there’s a constant flow of people saying this, not just under my leadership, under Ming, under Charles, constantly.
Actually if you look over time what has happened after every single general election, whether in opposition or government, we have taken a big knock. Actually by some estimates we lost more in terms of the opinion poll vote share after the 2005 general election than we did after this one, and I think it is self-evidently the case that given all the controversial decisions we have had to take, this is the point of maximum pressure for the Liberal Democrats.
I equally predict that with a bit of luck, with a bit of steel, with a bit of resilience with a kind of discipline, we won’t just recover but we will, I hope, reap the credit – not now, not next week, not even next year. But in two or three years time as the economy recovers, as the reforms that we are introducing, political and public services and so on actually start bearing fruit, people will start thinking, do you know what? I may or my not have agreed with the fact they went into the coalition, I may or may not have been angry when they had to take those difficult decisions but with the benefit of hindsight I think they are the right decisions which put Britain on a better path.
And I think it’s at that point that we will be able to turn around to people in 2015 and stand not only on a record but what we want for the future. That’s not a smash and grab strategy from one week to the next; we are playing a five year strategy.
HOW ARE RELATIONS WITH DAVID?
Cameron?
YES.
Oh, very good.
YOU SAID EARLY ON IN THE COALITION YOU DIDN’T CONSIDER YOURSELVES FRIENDS.
I don’t think he would either. I don’t think what the country wants is for us to become best mates. We work well together and that’s good for the country. I think we both have worked out a successful way of working together, but it’s not about personal likes and dislikes. Its about can we sort stuff together.
HOW DID YOU FEEL WHEN SOME OF THE OLD TORY MENTALITY ROSE UP, WITH LORD YOUNG AND THEN HOWARD FLIGHT?
To say I disagreed with them is to put it very mildly.
ARE THERE MOMENTS WHEN YOU THINK ‘GULP, IT IS THE TORIES’ – THAT THERE’S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE DAVID CAMERON TORIES AND THE OLD GUARD? DO YOU GET PANGS OF REGRET?
I think the Conservatives… we are creating a coalition government at the moment and that means the Liberal Democrats are not the Liberal Democrats in government that we would be if we would be entirely on our own, and exactly the same with the Conservatives. People constantly tell me about the things that we haven’t been able to deliver from our manifesto. There are plenty of things the Conservatives are not delivering either. Because that’s what we agreed in the coalition agreement. So the act of going into coalition agreement has a transformative effect on both parties.
DO YOU THINK THE GOVERNMENT AND THE COUNTRY IS BETTER FOR HAVING THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS IN IT? THAT THE LIB DEMS ARE TAKING THE HARD EDGE OFF THE TORIES.
My own view is that if you put it all together, our emphasis on devolution, our emphasis on restoring civil liberties, our emphasis on political reform, our emphasis on not leaving the next generation debts which are not their own, our emphasis on social mobility. I really do think, and I don’t say this in any possessive way, I really do think it is quite a liberal government and has got a very strong liberal flavour. Liberalism is not the monopoly of Liberal Democrats. There are liberal Conservatives, there are liberal Labour people. I have never been a pathologically tribal politician, or I wouldn’t be doing what I was doing. I actually care more about doing my best to try and create a liberal Britain than I do about the daily ups and downs of British politics.
HOW IS MIRIAM?
She is adorable and wonderful. But she went off to the states for 24 hours so I came back from Kazakhstan sleepless yesterday and then obviously we have three kids, one of who decided to puke in the middle of the night. So I had two slightly sick children in the bedroom with me last night.
HOW ARE YOU FITTING EVERYTHING IN WITH FAMILY LIFE?
It’s really tricky, juggling constantly. The good thing is we are still staying in our own house, we haven’t moved into the Whitehall fortress. They still go to their school. I took them to school, this morning. Miriam works full-time so it’s constant juggling. One of us takes them to school and one puts them to bed.
IS IT RIGHT YOU WERE PETITIONED ABOUT THE SCHOOL SPORTS CUTS AT THE SCHOOL GATE?
Yes, where did you hear that?
IS THERE MOVEMENT ON SCHOOL SPORT?
As David said, we are looking at trying to not simply turn the clock back and write out a blank cheque and it’s not perfect – We will try and do what we can to try and improve it.
IS IT RIGHT THAT YOU RAISED CONCERNS ABOUT IT?
I vowed not to give a running commentary on what I raise internally but I believe passionately that if we can we should try and encourage kids to participate in sport.
HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT THE WORLD CUP BID?
I just feel really heartbroken for the whole team that worked so hard on it. It was a huge effort. I hosted the FIFA bid back in August and was out with my world cup badge when meeting world leaders. We had a really great bid, we really did.
Eagle Eye 