Nick Clegg's conference speech: Optimistic but still unclear

Against a backdrop of resignation speculation and falling poll ratings, Nick Clegg sauntered on to the stage in Glasgow, half-an-hour behind schedule. The Deputy Prime Minister, whose tardiness was possibly due to yet another outfit change, was smartly attired and looking battle ready. He was fighting for his political life and he knew it—speculation has been rife about potential successors to the Liberal Democrat leadership, not least among them Tim Farron who preceded him onstage.

This speech marked a critical moment for Clegg and his party. Opinion polls this week have put the Lib Dems as low as 6 per cent, with more than half of voters declaring the party irrelevant. Will he go down in history as the man who drove the Liberal Democrat party into irrelevance? As Andrew Neil said at the start of the conference, the current view is that “Coalition has killed Clegg’s career.” This was the chance for the Liberal Democrat leader to finally throw off the spectre of his disastrous U-turn on tuition fees and convince voters that, like him or loathe him, he is the only political leader willing to stand up for liberal Britain.

Despite all this speculation, the mood in the auditorium was strangely flat—there would be no big reveals in this hour-long speech. In a slightly bizarre move, the Liberal Democrats had already posted the entire text on the party website. So we already knew about the innovative promise to introduce national waiting time targets for psychological conditions. Under Clegg's plans, which have been widely hailed by mental health campaigners, depression sufferers would begin treatments within 18 weeks, and young people with psychosis would be seen within 14 days (the same target as cancer patients). Clegg promised to end “the discrimination against mental health for good.”  Other predictable, but well-received, policies designed to please the party faithful, and hopefully woo the electorate, included tax cuts—the Liberal Democrats warned Clegg would “borrow less than Labour, but we’ll cut less than the Tories.”

Clegg’s message was clear: compassionate conservatism might be dead but Britain would be a “meaner, weaker, poorer” place without the Liberal Democrats. With the party competing for third place in the polls with Ukip on a good day, Clegg launched an impassioned attack on what he described as the divisive “us-versus-them” approach championed by the likes of Nigel Farage, whose name he pronounced with a francophone extended "rrrr."

"Life is so simple when you know who – or what – to blame. It's seductive and it's beguiling,” he told the conference. “That much may even be proved tomorrow, if the people of Clacton give the UK Independence Party an MP. But resentment, the politics of fear, doesn't pay the bills or create a single job... Dressed up as the politics of hope, it is in fact a counsel of despair."

This was a combative Clegg. His speech was polished, his delivery fluent, his manner almost statesmanlike. As he admits, he is no longer a fresh-faced outsider, but he is determined that his party can still exert a moderating influence on the “vested interests” of both Labour and the Conservatives. Labour can’t be trusted with the economy, he said, making the now de rigueur dig at Ed Miliband’s omission of the deficit from his speech. As for the Tories, he added, they only look after their own and have junked the Big Society idea that “we are all in it together.” Despite leading Lib Dems refusing to state whether they would prefer a coalition with the Tories or Labour, there is a sense that a second deal with the Conservatives would allow the party to finish the job they have begun in government.

“We mustn’t allow coalition to be caricatured,” the Lib Dem leader told conference.   “I’m immensely proud of what we’ve achieved and I don’t want the Tories claiming all the credit for everything we’ve done… simply forming a successful coalition unlocks the grip on power of the old, establishment parties.”

Despite this awareness of the precarious position both he and his party are in, there was a sense of optimism and resilience about Nick Clegg today. This is a man who who many suspect will be gone after 7^th May 2015, whatever the  result in the general election. And yet this was probably his best performance to date. The most vociferous criticism came in the form of a Twitter backlash from comedian Al Murray whose comments on Britishness Clegg quoted in his speech.

But the strategy of staking out the middle ground between the two main parties could still backfire. The Liberal Democrats have struggled throughout coalition to make their voice heard and are in the throes of an identity crisis. Presenting themselves primarily as a tempering force standing against the perceived evils of the big two parties may reduce their ability to connect with the public in their own right. If we are going to agree with Nick again, we still need a clearer sense of who exactly the Liberal Democrats are.