Woeful political handling lead to turmoil in Lib Dem ranks over tuition fee hike
Coalition-shaking turmoil within the Lib Dem ranks over the tuition fees hike can hardly have been a surprise, even to the most unworldly party activist. Nor would the bookies have risked their money by offering generous odds against Norman Baker becoming the minister most noisily grapping with his conscience ahead of Thursday's vote – or Paddy Ashdown riding to Nick Clegg's rescue.
Given that Clegg had spent two years ineffectually manoeuvring to ditch his own policy in favour of something more realistic, the puzzle is why he let himself be cornered into endorsing the anti-fees pledge in the election, complete with "read my lips" photos.
"God knows why, when he could have kicked it into the long grass. Ask a psychologist," snaps one party appartchik who admires the controversial compromise stitched up between universities minister David Willetts and his boss, Vince Cable, the Lib Dem Hamlet. It's the political handling that has been woeful, though Labour has wobbled woefully too.
Clegg has done this before. In 2008, when the Commons voted on a referendum on the EU's Lisbon Treaty, Clegg persuaded his troops to abstain, thereby breaking a 2005 election pledge. For a pro-European it was the constructive thing to do, but it annoyed both sides. Just so with Thursday's vote where he tried the unified-abstention tactic, only to be upbraided by Cable who insisted on being able to vote for the well-crafted compromise on which he had worked so hard.
Hence the three-possibly-four-way split looming: votes for and against (Charles Kennedy and Ming Campbell), abstentions, and a vote to postpone the vote, with Clegg making an enforced virtue of self-parodic diversity. Not that anything short of 40-plus Lib Dems voting with Labour would derail the policy. It won't happen.
The contrast with David Cameron's unwise election pledge is instructive: under pressure in the TV debates the Tory leader promised to protect pensioners' perks, winter fuel money and bus passes. They duly escaped George Osborne's axe.
Cleggista policy wonks argue that the Cable-Willetts deal, one of 50 funding models sweated over by officials, is "a masterclass in rational policymaking", one which addresses concerns of the four stakeholder groups. Students, especially the Cinderella part-timers, will no longer pay upfront; graduates will pay according to their means (but not below £21k a year); taxpayers, most of whom didn't go to university, subsidise it less; universities do less well, having lost teaching subsidies, but now have an income stream no longer dependent on government whim.
For good measure, add loyalists, the graduate tax model, favoured by student leaders, would see low-earning graduates pay more, which may explain why the past month's campus revolt has been visibly middle class. None of which has done Clegg much good because he has managed to insist he is right ("quite brave, bold and socially progressive"), but also to wring his hands defensively about ditching party policy.
Yet it is not as if he didn't try before polling day, both in private discussion, policy papers and - most blatantly - via a media briefing bounce which brought the 2009 conference's wrath down on his head. It must be unpleasant to find his home as well as engagements targeted by the new style of "in your Facebook" campaigning, but Clegg has led a more sheltered life than Ashdown. His often-sanctimonious style intensifies the personal nature of attacks ("at least Cameron has a sense of humour," says Alan Johnson). But Clegg's hunch that the Lib Dems can weather the storm could yet be vindicated, if only the economy comes good. Today ministers will ditch a Tory campaign pledge on knives and embrace a Lib Dem one on tax avoidance. In coalition you win some, lose some.