I am worried that Nick Clegg is finding his new role as great social reformer too stressful. Of course, no one ever said that being the New Gladstone was going to be easy, but Nick seems way too close to the edge.
Indeed, as I watched him in the Commons, his face contorted, his voice crackling with rage, he reminded me of that great advert for social mobility — Wayne Rooney.
“Calm down,” cried Labour MPs, hands outstretched.
This only upset him more. “No! No!” he shouted, face of fury, as he decried the deficit and how it would burden our country.
He was shouting at Harriet, which, to be honest, I think we can all understand. She’d wound him up by claiming that he wasn’t the New Gladstone. “For many young people,” she pointed out, “mobility has turned into a bus down the jobcentre.”
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She claimed that when Nick was on a mission, the opposite seemed to happen. He wanted to end tuition fees, they trebled. He was against higher VAT, it rose.
He supported the educational maintenance allowance, it was abolished. “If you care about something, the very last person you want on your side is the Deputy Prime Minister,” she insisted.
Ouch. Nick gave in to Deficit Rage. “Your leader,” he shouted, “recently went to Hyde Park and emulated Martin Luther King.”
At this Nick threw out both arms, just like MLK would have (for MLK was, like him, a great social reformer). “I never heard Martin Luther King say: I have a dream, we need cuts but a little more slowly and a little bit less than the other lot!”
Was Nick going to explode? His face was a firecracker. Forget social mobility. Nick’s campaign for facial mobility is already a huge success. He tried to stay calm but ended up contorted with frustration, anger and rage. Why couldn’t Labour MPs acknowledge that his policies were helping the poor?
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Nick, as we should have known, also has a dream. “Of course it is true that most people do not sit around talking about trans-generational social mobility,” he said, voice tinged with sadness, “but at the heart of this strategy is a common instinct.” Parents just wanted the best for their children.
Labour got personal. They had heard that Nick’s own father had got him an internship at a Finnish bank in that awkward period between Westminster School and Cambridge. (Not so much a gap year as a social mobility gap year.) Was it true?
“Yes,” cried Nick. “I did, as I suppose many others . . . ”
He was drowned out by shouts from MPs without Finnish connections. “Well, OK. That’s very good for you if you didn’t.”
Nick then accused a Labour MP of calling him a liar from a sedentary position (this, by the way, is trans-generational socially mobile talk for what you and I would call “sitting”). This caused a huge hoo-ha.
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When another Labour MP refused to acknowledge that he was helping poor students, he exploded again. “You shake your head,” shouted Nick. “This is an example of evidence-based policy! I know that you don’t like it! You probably wouldn’t acknowledge it if it hit you in the head!”
Poor Nick. Totally misunderstood. If he doesn’t watch it he could end up, like Rooney, with a ban.