Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg vowed Sunday that his Liberal Democrats would take a more assertive role in the year-old coalition government after the party took a hammering in elections. The Lib Dems last week lost a referendum on voting reform and fared badly in local elections, apparently taking the blame for harsh public services cuts while Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives escaped unscathed.
“The lesson I’ve learned listening to people on the doorsteps is that people want a louder Liberal Democrat voice in government,” Clegg told the BBC. “We need to show people where we have a moderating influence on the Conservatives and we need to stand up for our values and say that loud and clear.” Clegg signalled his new stance by threatening to derail the coalition’s reforms of Britain’s prized state healthcare service unless there were “substantial, significant changes.”
But he said there would be no redrawing of the coalition agreement signed by the centrist Lib Dems with the centre-right Conservatives after general elections in May 2010. He also angrily dismissed a call by the leader of the opposition Labour party, Ed Miliband, for disaffected Lib Dem ministers to jump ship. “If they are not in favour of these Tory policies they should stand up for what they believe or leave the cabinet,” Miliband told Britain’s Observer newspaper.
Britain’s first coalition since World War II is under strain after more than two-thirds of voters on Thursday rejected the adoption the Alternative Vote system to elect lawmakers, which Clegg had heavily backed.
