Clegg speech to Scottish Liberal Democrats conference

Clegg speech to Scottish Liberal Democrats conference; Unlike our friends in the Labour Party. You’d think that a party leaving behind the largest peacetime debt in our national history would show some regret – That it would admit the scale of the challenge and be constructive in its approach. Not a bit of it. When it comes to the problems facing our country, Labour has nothing to offer. They say welfare needs reform, but they can’t say what they’d do. They say that that the political system needs change but then stand in its way. They say that the deficit must be cut but oppose measures designed to achieve that and have no alternative to speak of. Labour has gone from being a party of government to being the party of no. No ideas, no direction, no purpose. If Labour thinks that it can sit this out – That, having created these problems, it can now say nothing, let others solve them, and then arrogantly walk back in - then it is mistaken. Our country is suffering from Labour’s neglect. It must answer for its record, take responsibility and tell us what it’s really for. Because no is not enough. When we came into government last May, we faced crises on three fronts. Everyone was aware of the economic crisis. Not least here in Scotland. A UK debt eight times the size of the Scotland’s GDP. And two Scottish banks – RBS and HBOS – propped up but weighed down with liabilities worth twenty five times the size of the Scottish economy. But there were other crises too. A social crisis with the gap between rich and poor widening, with child poverty rising and with social mobility stalling. And a political crisis with Parliament held in disregard, MPs’ reputations at an all-time low and a voting system that excludes most people and denies them the power to change their country the way they want. Ten months later, not every problem is fixed. You cannot reverse decades of bad government and vested interests in less than a year. But you ca...