Nick Clegg’s democratic duty

Nick Clegg of the British Liberal Democrats has announced that in the event of a hung Parliament (it won’t happen, but the media love to talk endlessly about the possibility before every single election), the LibDems will support the party, Labour or Conservative, that gets the most votes, dropping the previous long-time policy of making its support contingent on the implementation of proportional representation. Clegg claims that it is his democratic duty to back the top vote-getter. He says, “Whichever party has the strongest mandate from the British people, it seems to me obvious in a democracy they have the first right to seek to try and govern, either on their own or with others.” This is an odd theory for the leader of a third party, one which will be very lucky to break 20%, to hold, since under it, the Lib Dems don’t really have any right to exist. Indeed, the voters whose opinions matter least in Clegg’s formulation are the ones that vote for his party, since the “mandate” will come exclusively from those members of the electorate who vote for either the Tory or Labour party. LibDem voters will be entirely irrelevant in determining what their MPs will do in Parliament. Democratic duty, indeed.

At least when LibDem leaders in the past talked complete crap, you knew it was because they were drunk.