Clegg: We’ll prove them wrong
By politics.co.uk staff
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has offered a defiant new year’s message to party members.
The deputy prime minister said his party was “delivering on every single one” of his party’s four manifesto priorities in a message composed while on a Christmas break in Spain.
The coalition government’s junior party has been reeling from the double-whammy of public anger over its tuition fees U-turn and business secretary Vince Cable’s comments that he could bring down the government by resigning.
As the spending cuts begin to bite in 2011 the next 12 months could be equally traumatic, with May’s local elections set to provide a shock to the system – according to current opinion polls.
“All of us are going to hear some people predict the worst for our party – the same people who have been underestimating the Liberal Democrats for as long as we have existed,” Mr Clegg wrote.
“But we prove them wrong at every single turn. The next 12 months will be no different because we will continue to build the liberal, fairer, greener Britain that we all believe in.”
He said he was happy to celebrate “Liberals in power for the first time in 70 years” but looked ahead to a fresh set of priorities in 2011.
These included: “Radical reform of our political system and restoring our hard-won civil liberties; boosting social mobility so that no child is held back by the circumstances of his or her birth; and making sure the economic recovery is green and balanced, with opportunities spread across the whole country.”
