Thursday, May 08, 2008

Nick Clegg - I won't play footsie with the big boys

Thanks to the kind heart of Millenium's daddy I got an unexpected bite at the cherry at the Bloggers Bash with Nick Clegg this evening. I was a sub and since everyone turned up I really shouldn't have been there - but since I was in the building I got a special dispensation! I thought I would be clever and try out the voice recorder on my brand new all singing all dancing phone.........sadly it wasn't all it was cracked up to be! So, I am left with my memory and a few sketchy notes.

Nick looked and sounded incredibly fresh and upbeat following what must have been a gruelling few weeks. He was asked a range of interesting questions, but for me what was music to my ears was his response to a question from Paul Walter on electoral reform. He reminded us that this was one of Labour's promises in 1997 that had not materialised. Nick's response was that he wasn't about to do deals with a weak Labour Party in order to achieve that reform, nor did he have any appetite for doing deals with the Tories, his view, that there was "little merit in playing footsie with either party" - glad to hear it Nick!

As for the rest of the interview, more later!

2 comments:

Jo Christie-Smith said...

Aw! I was going to use the footsie quote as my headline as well!

James Graham (Quaequam Blog!) said...

I thought Nick said in his conference speech that he was in favour of changing the nature of our politics? If Labour (or the Tories for that matter) were to offer us electoral reform and thus the chance to achieve exactly that, isn't a bit of footsie a rather small price to pay? I'm not saying we should agree to anything, but if we aren't willing to press our advantage home when we have it, then what is the point of us?

It's not as if he doesn't spend most of his time these days bragging about how often he has jumped into bed with people. Why the sudden coyness now?

Worried.