Nick Clegg discusses coalition and tuition fees in Newsnight interview

In a recent interview, former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg reflected on the 2010-2015 coalition government, the legacy of tuition fees, and the current state of British politics. Clegg, who later served as a senior executive at Facebook's parent company Meta, spoke about the stability of the coalition, describing it as a 'weird political incentive' that leaned towards stability because reopening the coalition agreement would have been too complex. He acknowledged the controversy over tuition fees, noting that the system was inherited from Labour and has since been 'messed about with by government after government'. Clegg defended the coalition's decision to exempt universities from austerity, calling it a 'golden age' for vice chancellors, but said the current system is 'completely indefensible' and he would now advocate for wholesale reform.

Turning to Labour's fiscal approach, Clegg criticised the party's cultural problem of replacing policy with 'sanctimony'. He argued that Labour had spent a decade telling its members that fiscal discipline was morally reprehensible, making it difficult for leaders like Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves to later advocate for painful spending decisions. He warned that 'sanctimony doesn't balance the books'. On Andy Burnham, Clegg described his pitch as 'extraordinarily retro labour', focused on past battles rather than growing the economy. He expressed concern that no major party is now 'viscerally on the side of wealth creators'.

Clegg also pushed back against the idea that coalition austerity caused the decline of left-behind towns, pointing out that he vetoed £12 billion of welfare cuts after the 2015 election. He noted that the coalition reduced the deficit more slowly than Labour had planned, and that the top 1% paid more tax under the coalition than under Labour. He highlighted that in 2014, UK economic growth was close to 3%, higher than the United States. The interview covered his career journey from Brussels to Westminster to Silicon Valley, which he described as moving from 'one slightly weird bubble to another'.