Is Nick Clegg a Liberal Democrat?

All my life I have found that Liberal Democrat policies (and before that, Liberal-SDP Alliance policies, and before that, Liberal policies) have been, if not a perfect match to my own views, then at least the closest to them. In particular, I am broadly centrist, tilting somewhat to the left, strongly in favour of voting reform, strongly in favour of remaining part of the European Union, and very keen to take much more radical action to combat climate change. However, Nick Clegg is doing his best to persuade me that to vote Liberal Democrat is no longer a good way of promoting these values. Here is what he has said about building coalitions after the election:

As we have always said, the party with the most votes and the most seats in this election has the first right to seek to form a Government. The British people would rightly question the legitimacy of a coalition that didn’t allow the party with the largest number of seats and votes the opportunity to attempt to form a Government first.

I’m proud that the Liberal Democrats have proved we can form a strong and stable coalition government, able to bring prosperity to Britain.

Just like we would not put UKIP in charge of Europe, we are not going to put the SNP in charge of Britain – a country they want to rip apart.

The current projections at Five Thirty-Eight put the Conservatives on 281 seats, Labour on 268, the Scottish Nationalists on 49 and the Liberal Democrats on 26. If these are correct, then Clegg is saying that he will try first to form a Government with the Conservatives. I claim that this is inconsistent with all four of the fundamental Liberal values I mentioned.