Politics

Clegg makes plea for liberal values

CHOICE: Liberal Democrat Party leader Nick Clegg delivers a speech to supporters during a visit to Hush Heath Winery in Staplehurst, Kent while on the General Election campaign trail<br /><br />PICTURE: Jonathan <br />Brady/PA
CHOICE: Liberal Democrat Party leader Nick Clegg delivers a speech to supporters during a visit to Hush Heath Winery in Staplehurst, Kent while on the General Election campaign trail

PICTURE: Jonathan
Brady/PA
CHOICE: Liberal Democrat Party leader Nick Clegg delivers a speech to supporters during a visit to Hush Heath Winery in Staplehurst, Kent while on the General Election campaign trail

PICTURE: Jonathan
Brady/PA
(Jonathan Brady/PA)

Nick Clegg has claimed the election posed the biggest choice for voters in a generation as he promised to make a “full-throated appeal” for liberal values.

The Liberal Democrat leader said he was stepping up his campaign in order to counter the risk of the country taking a “wrong turn” on polling day.

Setting out his view of what was at stake on May 7, he said: “My own view is that the longer this campaign has gone on, the more it seems to me this is an election which could be as pivotal to the future development of our country as some of the big, direction-changing elections of the past – 1979 was one of the big direction-changing elections of the past, for good or for ill.”

The Lib Dem leader told reporters on his campaign bus: “I think from now until Thursday you will hopefully see a more intense pace in the Lib Dem campaign but also a more full-throated appeal to those strong, compassionate, liberal values of stability, of decency, of unity which I believe are genuinely under threat if the country takes a wrong turn on Thursday.”

The Lib Dem leader added: “My great fear is, if we are not careful, the direction that is taken is a direction towards factionalism, populism and a vacating of the centre ground.”

Mr Clegg has set out his final red lines, including a commitment to end public sector pay cuts and measures to protect the natural environment.

But the Lib Dem “green line” only covers one of the party’s five proposed environmental laws.

Along with the commitment to play a lead role in the Paris negotiations to try to keep global temperature rises within two degrees of pre-industrial levels, the Lib Dems would insist on a “Nature Act” to improve biodiversity and access to green space.

The limited nature of the policy demand means the party would not insist on other measures in the green laws package, including a target to decarbonise the power sector by 2030 and a legally binding target for a “zero-carbon Britain” by 2050.

Lib Dem aides said they hoped the Paris talks would provide a framework for meeting those commitments. In a further move which could concern the green lobby in his party, Mr Clegg also refused to say he would veto Tory plans to curb onshore wind farms.

He said it would be a “great shame” to remove a form of renewable power for ideological reasons but added: “There are other green technologies and our whole energy strategy doesn’t just rely on onshore wind.”

Mr Clegg continued: “I don’t think the whole environmental agenda depends on oAsked whether he would accept the referendum “red line” in exchange for his own policy demands, Mr Clegg told ITV News: “How the parties interact with each other and how the red lines – whether they are compatible or not with each other – is entirely dependent on the mandate that is given to each political party in the ballot box on Thursday.”