Dear William Hague,
As you have been doing some excellent work on the lack of an EU Referendum, the Government are clearly backed into a corner. Now is your chance to ram home your advantage and humiliate Nick Clegg as well.
This morning’s papers show that Nick Clegg has quite miraculously decided that he thinks we should have a vote on EU membership. This gives you two angles for attack. Firstly, why hasn’t he said this before? Surely he cannot change his mind overnight on such an important issue? Secondly, is it pure coincidence that this announcement comes at precisely the same time that he is under serious presure from his own front bench about the backtracking of the Lib Dems over the EU Referendum? Clegg is weak and has completely failed to take control of his party since becoming leader. Seeing as you are ahead on points against the Government, the Lib Dems are ripe for some charges of flip-flopping and being a party in disarray with such a significant rebellion on the horizon. Maybe you could challenge Nick Clegg to fire all the Lib Dem front benchers who break the party line over the EU Referendum to put even more pressure on his feeble leadership skills?
Have fun with this!
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
2 responses so far ↓
Andrew // February 25, 2008 at 5:15 pm
I have to agree that Clegg has been a bit of a let down since coming to the leadership. This may be symptomatic of the recent leadership problems of the Lib Dems, not helped by the charismatic Mr Cable who turned out to be a bit of a hit with the public and the media. Now Clegg faces the problem of being the new ‘long-term’ leader of a party that has been in political limbo since the departure of CK. He must stamp some authority on the party and be seen to be moving them forward, but how to do it? I don’t have an answer and neither does he so it seems. He also seems a bit out his depth at PMQ (although in my blog I did think he had a decent first outing) and was swatted away with irritating ease by Brown last week.
A flip-flopper maybe, but a harmless one. The Tories have a bigger uglier fish to fry…
Letters From A Tory // February 25, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Sensible analysis. For all the talk of his great communications skills and media savvy (let’s not forget, it was a big factor in people choosing him over Huhne in the leadership contest) he has achieved very little and failed to give the Lib Dems anything like a meaningful identity.
The threat of a rebellion will force him to act, yet he doesn’t come across as having any control over his own party.
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