Nick Clegg: The Corbynite Left say my record in Government didn’t deserve a Knighthood – they’re wrong It was like the good old days. Incoming fire from left and right. “Arise Sir Useless” screeched the front-page headline […]

It was like the good old days. Incoming fire from left and right. “Arise Sir Useless” screeched the front-page headline of the Daily Mail in Scotland with characteristic restraint.

“A true sign of how Britain’s elite rewards failure” spluttered an angry Guardian headline.

One pundit even said that it was “uncool” and “Alan Partridge-esque”. Right-wing Brexiters fulminated, left-wing bloggers pontificated – but both agreed it was unacceptable.

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You’d think I was standing for election. Or I’d said that we should join the Euro next week. Or that the new British passport should feature yellow stars on a blue background. Yet all this huffing and puffing was simply because I’d been included in the New Years Honours list for the work I did as Deputy Prime Minister.

Luckily, judging from the messages from well wishers, the general public appears to take a less hysterical attitude towards Honours.

Stories matter

But there was one argument deployed against my Knighthood which deserves to be taken seriously: the argument from the Corbynite Left that the record of the Coalition Government, especially the reductions in public spending, somehow disqualified me, and by extension other Lib Dems who were in Government, from receiving Honours at all.

It is an allegation worth considering in detail as it forms a central part of the Labour Party’s wider narrative under Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell: the 2008 financial crisis did not require austerity; tax and spend policies were deliberately regressive; inequality soared; the weak were punished as the strong were protected; the Lib Dems meekly fell into line with hard-line Tory doctrine; and austerity has been pursued uninterrupted and unaltered from 2010 to the present day.

Much of the Coalition’s progressive record has been undone by the Conservatives since they won a majority of their own in May 2015

Stories matter in politics.

And this, in essence, is the story told by Corbyn’s Labour Party about our recent past as it seeks to explain to the British people why it deserves to be in Government today. Unfortunately, it is misleading, wrong and distorted in every single respect.

Just consider this: the pace of deficit reduction under the Coalition was less – yes, less – than that planned by Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling in Labour’s 2010 Manifesto (they even passed a law to slash the deficit in half in four years – the Coalition did so in slower time).

Earnings inequality was less – yes, less – by the end of the Coalition than when Labour left office; for 99% of the time Labour was in office, the highest rate of tax was 40%, under the Coalition it was 45%; by the end of the Coalition, the top 1% of earners paid 27% of income tax, higher than at any point under Labour; the top 20% contributed more towards deficit reduction during the Coalition than the remaining 80% put together.

History will show that the Coalition was a remarkably moderate and stable Government in unstable and immoderate times

Female unemployment soared by 26% during Labour’s time in office, whilst the number of women in work increased by a million to an all-time high under the Coalition.

The Coalition was the first Government ever to introduce free universal school meals for the youngest children at primary school and an entitlement to free pre school support for 2-year olds from the most disadvantaged families.

Shared parental leave and the right to flexible working were dramatically increased. Labour’s abhorrent policy of incarcerating the innocent children of asylum seekers was ended.

Work undone

Crucially, much of this progressive record has been undone by the Conservatives since they won a majority of their own in May 2015.

£12 billion of extra, and overwhelmingly regressive, welfare cuts have been forced through, all of which I had personally blocked in the Coalition.

Capital gains tax has been slashed (one of the first acts of the Coalition was to increase it from 18% to 28% for higher earners); corporation tax cuts have been pursued well beyond what is justified.

Higher income earners have been given disproportionately favourable tax treatment as the Conservatives have lifted the higher rate tax threshold, and the Institute of Fiscal Studies has shown that the sharp increase in inequality expected in this Parliament is largely, if not exclusively, due to these most recent tax and benefit changes.

All of them only occurred after the Coalition ended.

Inconvenient truths

These are the inconvenient truths which the Corbynite Left refuses to acknowledge – much as they refuse to acknowledge that the single biggest source of social damage in recent years was the financial crisis of 2008, a crisis in large part caused by Labour’s failure to regulate the banks properly.

Contrary to left-wing folklore, I didn’t relish many of the choices we had to make.

Responding to the economic crash and making necessary savings to public spending were not the circumstances that I would have chosen to be in government, but they were the unavoidable circumstances that I – and any politician, from any party – had to face up to.

Timing may be everything in politics, but no politician can choose the events that they must respond to.

The Left also likes to claim that the Lib Dems could have mustered a Parliamentary majority to govern with Gordon Brown in 2010 to keep the Conservatives out of power.

In fact, Labour and Lib Dem MPs would have been 11 seats short of a majority, and a “rainbow” coalition with smaller parties was simply unworkable.

And yet now the hard-left leadership of the Labour Party wants to commit the greatest betrayal of progressive values of all: supporting a “Tory Brexit” which will cost the country many billions of pounds. The hypocrisy is beyond parody.

History will smile on the Coalition

I don’t claim that the Coalition was perfect.

We made mistakes, as all Governments do. There were things I wish we hadn’t done.

But history will show it was a remarkably moderate and stable Government in unstable and immoderate times. A rewriting of history may appeal to the misplaced moral superiority of the hard Left – but it is no basis upon which to govern the country.

Who knows, a few years from now, maybe it’s something Lord Corbyn of Upper Street may learn to regret.

@nick_clegg